Worst of all is the lead dust in the white-lead trades.
Here is a description of the typical dissolution of a young, healthy, well-developed girl who goes to work in a white-lead factory:- Here, after a varying degree of exposure, she becomes anaemic.

It may be that her gums show a very faint blue line, or perchance her teeth and gums are perfectly sound, and no blue line is discernible.
Coincidently with the anaemia she has been getting thinner, but so gradually as scarcely to impress itself upon her or her friends.
Sickness, however, ensues, and headaches, growing in intensity, are developed.

These are frequently attended by obscuration of vision or temporary blindness.

Such a girl passes into what appears to her friends and medical adviser as ordinary hysteria.

This gradually deepens without warning, until she is suddenly seized with a convulsion, beginning in one half of the face, then involving the arm, next the leg of the same side of the body, until the convulsion, violent and purely epileptic form in character, becomes universal.
This is attended by loss of consciousness, out of which she passes into a series of convulsions, gradually increasing in severity, in one of which she dies--or consciousness, partial or perfect, is regained, either, it may be, for a few minutes, a few hours, or days, during which violent headache is complained of, or she is delirious and excited, as in acute mania, or dull and sullen as in melancholia, and requires to be roused, when she is found wandering, and her speech is somewhat imperfect.