Rheumatism in dockers and civil servants. A comparison of heavy manual and sedentary workers.

The Industrial Survey Unit of the Arthritis and Rheumatism Council since 1961 has undertaken broad surveys of the prevalence and social and economic effects of rheumatic complaints among workers in several industries and occupations. Previous communications have given the results of surveys of men working in a coal mine (Anderson, Duthie, and Moody, 1962) and a naval dockyard (Anderson and Duthie, 1963), an electronic engineering factory (Partridge, Anderson, McCarthy, and Duthie, 1965), and a group of iron foundries (Partridge, Anderson, McCarthy, and Duthie, 1968). To obtain information on as wide a range of occupations and working environments as possible, two further groups of men have been studied. They are (a) civil servants in a government department and (b) dockers in a civilian commercial dock. Men in these two occupations have been considered together for a number of reasons: the working environment of the two groups was in sharp contrast, there was a great difference in the physical effort demanded by the occupation, and both groups of men were essentially stable working populations with few transient workers, most of the men having been employed either as civil servant or as docker for most of their working lives.