Dust, Disease and Discovery: Edinburgh’s Hidden Occupational History

A National Pathology Week talk on how 19th-century Edinburgh revealed the links between workplace dust and lung disease in miners and stonemasons.

For National Pathology Week, Professor Ken Donaldson, Surgeons' Hall Museums' Senior Research Fellow, and practising pathologist Edmund Joseph tell the stories of two occupational lung diseases in 19th-century Edinburgh. The talk follows the case of miner John Hogg's coal-blackened lungs and the stonemasons who built the New Town, showing how pioneering observations exposed the deadly connection between dust, occupation and lung disease. It transformed understanding of coal workers' pneumoconiosis and silicosis. The event is for ages 16+ and includes a content warning about human remains and representations of anatomy, injury and disease in the collections.