to Holland and used to make white and red lead paint pigments. Working conditions The initial attraction of the Leadhills district was mining. On his visit to the mining area in 1772, the naturalist Thomas Pennant had remarked on its barren landscape: "Nothing can equal the barren and gloomy appearance of the country round [Leadhills]: neither tree nor shrub, nor verdure, nor picturesque rock, appear to amuse the eye…" Three years later, in 1776, artist William Gilpin found that, in relation to the working conditions, "the mines here, as in all mineral countries, are destructive of health", "you see an infirm frame, and squalid looks in most of the inhabitants". and twelve years later, according to Rev. William Peterkin (1738-1792), the Minister at Leadhills (and member of its library) from 1785 until his death, the conditions of both the miners and the lead smelters were no better: The external appearance of Leadhills is ugly beyond description: rock, short heath, and barren [clay]. Every sort of vegetable is with difficulty raised and seldom comes to perfection. Spring water there is perhaps as fine as any in the world: but, the water below the smelting-[mills], is the most dangerous. The lead before smelting is broken very small and washed from extraneous matter. It contains frequently arsenic, sulphur, zinc, etc. which poisons the water in which it is washed. Fowls of any kind will not live many days at Leadhills. They pick up arsenical particles with their food, which, soon kills, them. Horses, cows, dogs, cats, are liable to the lead-brash. A cat, when seized with that distemper, springs like lightning through every corner of the house, falls into convulsions and dies. A dog falls into strong convulsions also but sometimes recovers. A cow grows perfectly mad in an instant and must be immediately killed. Fortunately, this distemper does not affect the human species. As Pennant had noted in 1772, the human counterpart of the animals' lead-brash was "mill-reek": The miners and smelters are subject here, as in other places, to the lead distemper, or mill-reek, as it is called here; which brings on palsies, and sometimes madness, terminating in death in about ten days. However, because lead was attracting such high prices during the American and Napoleonic Wars, and the domestic construction boom, Leadhills became world-famous for its lead mines. In a paper reporting on the treatment of a particular case of