While medical textbooks constantly emphasize the fact that lead is one of the chief agents causing the development of degenerative diseases of the heart, blood vessels, kidneys, nervous system and other organs, there is, however, an accumulation of evidence that in practice this teaching is all too frequently ignored or forgotten. Health officers, particularly in the larger industrial centers, have exceptional opportunity through their study of the causes of death assigned in death certificates, through the reports of hospitals, institutions and private physicians, and especially through inspections of factories and the medical examination of workers, to appraise the importance of lead as a cause of disease. One who makes such studies cannot escape the conclusion that many workers in the great varieties of industries in which lead is employed are injuriously affected by it, but do not seek medical care until they have suffered a severe breakdown; frequently, too, complaints