Scab (labor)

“ In a sharp labor disturbance, I have seen a man wholly unruffled under such words as liar, coward and thief, but the monosyllable "scab" had an instantaneous effect like a dash of vitriol in the face. During the recent strike at Lawrence a generous and active friend of the strikers asked a trade union official if her organization was not really scabbing against the large body of men and women who had left the mills. ”

“ Debs, will you define the meaning of the word ‘scab?’” He replied as follows: “A scab in labor unions means the same as a traitor to his country. It means a man who betrays his fellowmen by taking their places when they go on a strike for principle. It does not apply to non-union men who refuse to quit work.”
February 8 it was again reported to the court that Mr. Pullman could not be found. Each day there was reported an additional disappearance of employes of the Pullman Company ”

“ A good second to the question about the scab, concerns the strike itself. It is so incessant; reaches, year after year, in a dozen countries so many millions of people and shows no sign of abating.
What explanation have we of this? In the twitter of the drawing-room it is "perversity," "ignorance," "wickedness," "ingratitude," and with the angered business man, it is oftenest "labor poisoned and misguided by the agitator." ”

“ In the group-struggle over the division of the joint product, labor utilizes the union with its two great weapons, the strike and the boycott; while capital utilizes the trust and the association, the weapons of which are the black-list, the lockout, and the scab. The scab is by far the most formidable weapon of the three. He is the man who breaks strikes and causes all the trouble. ”

“ Every strike proves his position to be more and more precarious. The scab becomes more and more of a terror to the skilled laborer, even to the highly skilled laborer, for the scab can so much the more readily now take his place. ”

“ Experience has amply demonstrated that a properly made and properly used lime-and-sulphur dip is one of the cheapest and most efficient scab eradicators known, but its use should be confined to flocks in which scab is known to exist, and to shorn sheep, with the exception of very severe cases of scab in unshorn sheep. It should only be used when it can be properly boiled and settled. The use of lime-and-sulphur dips in flocks not known to have scab, especially if the sheep are full fleeced, cannot be recommended; in such cases tobacco, or sulphur and tobacco, is safer and equally good. ”

“ In Van Dieman's Land, the sheep are all reared in enclosed paddocks or fields as in England, and the sheep farmers there never attempt the thorough eradication of scab, contenting themselves with merely keeping it down, as it is called, and from the circumstance of the sheep not being enclosed in hurdles at night or fed in flocks during the day, it does not spread with the same rapidity or become so formidable a disease as when the contrary is the case. ”

“ Later this granular appearance is modified by an accumulation of creamy pus and swelling of the part, and finally scab formation and contraction of the new scar tissue.
Abrasions and superficial wounds usually heal under a scab. The scab is formed by the blood and wound secretions. This protects the surface of the wound until finally the destroyed tissue is replaced by the granulations, and the skin surface is restored.
Abnormal granulation is not an uncommon form of healing in domestic animals. Mechanical and bacterial irritation causes the injured tissue to become swollen and inflamed. ”

“ Only so far as Scabies (Scab) is concerned, it would seem allowable to assume allusions to be intended to vicious living as a cause of the malady. It cannot be without a reason that for centuries this one above all other skin diseases seems to have fallen under special disrepute; and the term to have been used by poets, by Martial187 for example, to indicate that sensual indulgence had been at work. In fact, several of the earliest Writers on Venereal disease hold it to be a sort of scabies, and even at a later period there is for long frequent mention made of Venereal scars or scabs. ”

“ It is one which might be of much use in Base hospitals if the patients were brought directly into them, but in the Field hospitals, in face of the rush with which the first dressings have to be done, I think it is seldom applicable, and consider the interference with the wound as rather likely to increase the danger of infection than to decrease it.
Dressings should not be too frequent; two should suffice for simple wounds with type forms of entry and exit; there is little discharge and usually no bleeding: hence the more the dry scab form of healing can be simulated the better. ”

“ Mr Cunningham once observed summer-dropt lambs with milk blotches, become fly blown, but this was in wet weather. Scab, or itch, is the most common disease, but of it I need not say any thing here. It never presents much variety, and is a disease better understood than almost any other. ”

“ This last mode of proceeding is strongly opposed by some authorities, as likely to induce unnecessary inflammatory action, through [42] the formation of a scab, which may require for its removal a process of sloughing, which may in some cases give rise to serious complications. As I have stated, the clamps are not always made of wood, and very many alterations and improvements, so called, have been from time to time brought forward. In Fig. 11 a few of these clamps are presented. ”

“ This ulcer does not occur early, and is not constant. The case under Pyle's observation showed no ulceration, and was absolutely painless, the negress applying for diagnosis rather than treatment. The furrow deepens until spontaneous amputation takes place, which rarely occurs, the patient generally hastening the process by his own operation, or by seeking surgical treatment. A dry scab forms at the furrow, and when picked and repicked constantly re-forms, being composed of horny desquamation or necrosis. ”

“ The treatment is identical with that of psoroptic mange in sheep. After the animals have been sheared and washed with soap, they should be completely immersed in a bath of the character mentioned in connection with sheep scab. If only one animal is infected, it may be sufficient to dress it repeatedly with an ointment containing some parasiticide. ”

“ The sheep laboring under the scab is exceedingly restless. It rubs itself with violence against trees, stones, fences, etc.; scratches itself with its feet, bites its sores, and tears off its wool with its teeth; as the pustules are broken, their matter escapes, and forms scabs, causing red, inflamed sores, which constantly extend, increasing the misery of the tortured animal; if unrelieved, he pines away, and soon perishes.
The post-mortem appearances are very uncertain and inconclusive. There is generally chronic inflammation of the intestines, with the presence of a great number of worms. ”

“ Use pure alcohol (not wood or denatured, as both are poisonous) , or a teaspoonful of sulphur-naphthol to a basin of water, or 1:1000 corrosive sublimate solution (wad with flexible collodion) . Do not use vaseline or any other substance on a freshly abrased surface. After a scab has formed, vaseline may be applied to keep this scab soft. Never close a wound with court plaster [1] . The only legitimate uses for sticking or adhesive plaster are to hold dressings in place where bandaging is difficult, or in case of a cut to keep edges closed without sewing the skin. ”

“ Fig. 519.—Multiple Needle Electrode.
In this treatment the needles are made to puncture the skin at right angles to them to a depth corresponding to the papillary layer. These pigments lie above that, so that it is not necessary to include the derma. At each point of puncture a white spot will appear which soon turns red. In a day’s time a number of fine scabs, or a single scab, will form over the parts treated, which fall away in about five days eventually, leaving the parts [485] paler than before, owing to a number of minute punctate scars. ”

“ The eruptions due to scratching have already been described in the descriptions of the ‘scratched skin,’ and comprise excoriations, erythema in parallel lines, eczema, impetiginous or so-called ecthymatous eruptions and wheals, and the inflammatory scab-topped papules often left after the subsidence of the wheals—especially in children. In carmen, cobblers, tailors, and others who sit on hard boards for hours together, pustular and scabbed eruptions, situated over the ischial tuberosities, are so abundant and constant as to be practically diagnostic of scabies in such people. ”

“ TREATMENT OF SCAB AND MANGE.—A careful inspection of recently purchased animals that pass through stockyards, or are shipped from sections where scab and mange are common skin diseases, is an important preventive measure. Infected animals should be completely isolated from the herd, and kept apart from other animals until after they have been treated. Hogs that are slightly infected should be quarantined and treated. ”

“ Delafond estimated that psoroptic mange formerly attacked one thirty-fifth of all the sheep in France every year, causing damage to the extent of five francs per head. At the present time, and since proper sanitary laws have been instituted, it has become much less common.
During the bad season of the year the mortality is greater, and may reach as much as from 40 to 50 per cent. In cases where scab is accompanied by some other disease, such as distomatosis, it may even rise to 80 per cent. ”

“ If the eschar be unadherent by subjacent pus, it may be ascertained in the space of from twelve to twenty-four hours; the centre is generally observed to be raised and to yield to the pressure [15] of a probe; sometimes the subjacent fluid has partly escaped by an opening at the side of the eschar.
When a scab forms underneath the eschar, which does not happen except the fluid has been allowed to remain too long under the eschar without being evacuated, there are pain and some inflammation, the eschar does not separate, but remains long over the sore, and there is no appearance of healing. ”

“ This results in the formation of a sore or opening down into the tissue with a varying-sized yellow, cheesy exudate or scab forming over it. Sometimes such scabs become very large and nearly fill the mouth, throat, or crop.
(2) Treatment. Various drugs and chemicals have been used to treat trichomoniasis. However, this condition has proved quite unresponsive to usual medication. In fact, drugs do not have much, if any, direct effect on the healing of tissue. All that medicine can do is to cut down the number72 of parasites present and permit nature to repair the damage done to the tissue. ”

“ The male is smaller than the female, and in the adult condition the two hindmost legs have suckers, as well as the four anterior. It remains on the surface of the skin, while the female burrows deeply in the substance of the epidermis. At the bottom of the oblique burrow it deposits ten to fifteen or more eggs, which hatch in a fortnight and then commence similar operations on their own account. Scabies generally starts between the fingers, whence it rapidly spreads. The disease is acquired from some patient suffering from the disease, or by contact with his apparel. ”

“ Cases are too numerous to mention where we have witnessed one set of "union men" scab on another set of workers, also unionists, who were struggling for better conditions. Yes, we call it scabbing, union workers remained at work alongside of strikebreakers, aided, abetted and gave comfort, even to the hauling and furnishing food to the scabs in strike-bound places. ”

“ Talking of scab—now a tradition in Australia—it was then plentiful in Victoria, with the exception of certain favoured districts, among which the trans-Loddon country was numbered. Now in the days when Theophilus was king, foreseeing the ruin of the district (or chiefly, perhaps, to Ebden and Keene) which would ensue should the disease get a footing, he fought against its introduction, either by carelessness or greed, with all the vigilant energy of his nature.
There are men of contemplation, of science, of culture, of action. ”

“ If we kept not only our wounds surgically clean, but our gums, noses, throats, skins, and fingernails, and burned and sterilized everything that came in contact with a sore, pustule, or scab, we should wipe out nine-tenths of our cases of wound-infection and suppuration ”

“ And so long as men continue to live in this competitive society, struggling tooth and nail with one another for food and shelter, (which is to struggle tooth and nail with one another for life) , that long will the scab continue to exist. His will “to live” will force him to exist. He may be flouted and jeered by his brothers, he may be beaten with bricks and clubs by the men who by superior strength and capacity scab upon him as he scabs upon them by longer hours and smaller wages, but through it all he will persist, giving a bit more of most for least than they are giving. ”

“ These increase in size and become crusted over, so that the characteristic lesion can only be seen round the edge of the scab. Growth continues to take place for several months, when scab and scutulum come away, leaving a shining bare patch destitute of hair. The disease is essentially chronic, lasting from ten to twenty years. It is caused by the growth of a fungus, and pathologically is the reaction of the tissues to the growth. ”