I ended the last blog with a comment that some low paper quality phenomena carry names inspired by the human body, perhaps because paper making took its physical toll on paper makers. As Günter Bayerl analysed, the physical toll was by no means little.
There were several health and safety hazard in paper mills. Major sources of serious and even fatal accidents were the mill river, the water weel and the stamping hammers, as well as the press when the newly formed paper sheets were pressed. The fire hazard of boiling bones and other animal parts for sizing was perhaps not large but the fire hazard of the rotting rags was certainly considerable.
The constant noise of the stamping hammers impaired the hearing of all people in the mill. The vat men, the persons dipping the paper mould into the vat and forming the sheet of paper, often suffered from severe skin conditions due to the constant contact with the watery pulp. The people working with rags, particularly with retting, often suffered from lung conditions. More generally, dust and germs in rags posed serious health hazards. Rags were particularly dangerous when purchased from hospitals during and after wars and epidemies; after the Thirty-Year-War, for example, rags from hospitals were often transmitters of the pestilence.
Based on all these descriptions, the paper mill seems to have been a dangerous workplace, and it is appalling to realise how dangerous and unsafe paper making was in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period. The topic of our next blog entry will be more positive, so watch out for it.
Further reading:
Günter Bayerl, Die Papiermühle: Vorindustrielle Papiermarcherei auf dem Gebiet des alten deutschen Reiches; Technologie, Arbeitsverhältnisse, Umwelt. 2 vols. Europäische Hochschulschriften Reihe III, 260. Frankfurt am Main: Lang, 1987.
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