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In the mid-1800s, factories began mass-producing matches.
在19世纪中期，工厂开始大量生产火柴。
Lots of them were hugely successful, and pretty soon, they were selling millions of matchboxes a year.
其中很多工厂都非常成功，很快，他们一年就卖出了数百万个火柴盒。
And then the factory workers — many of whom were young women — started dying.
然后工厂的工人——其中很多是年轻女性——开始死亡。
The symptoms would often start with a toothache and jaw pain and then progress to tissue death.
起初的症状是牙疼和下颌疼，进而是细胞死亡。
In some cases, the condition was fatal. Doctors eventually realized the problem was the kind of phosphorus used in the matches at the time,
在一些病例中，该疾病是致命的。医生最终意识到问题可能出在那时制作火柴所用的磷身上，
so they called the condition phossy jaw.
所以他们称这种疾病为磷毒性颌骨坏死。
But it still took decades and governmental crack-downs for companies to switch over to another, safer type of phosphorus.
但公司改用另一种更安全的磷还是花了几十年时间，政府也采取了严厉措施。
These days, phossy jaw would be little more than a relic of history,
如今磷毒性颌骨坏死更像是一种历史遗迹，
if it weren't for one thing: It's also a side effect in modern medicine.
如果不是因为一件事：这也算是现在医学中的一个副作用。
The English chemist John Walker is frequently credited with inventing the type of friction matches we would recognize, back in the 1820s.
英国化学家约翰·沃克常被认为是19世纪20年代发明摩擦火柴的人。
The main ingredients in his match heads were potassium chlorate and antimony sulfide,
他的火柴头的主要成分是氯酸钾和硫化锑，
which ignited from the heat of friction if you rubbed the match on sandpaper.
当你在砂纸上摩擦火柴时，它们就会燃烧起来。
There were some problems with these matches, though. Sometimes they didn't light at all…
虽然这些火柴存在一些问题。有时它们根本点不着......
and because you had to really scrape them to get the flame going, sometimes,
并且因为你必须使劲划才能点燃火焰，
the head of the match just flew off and there became a tiny little fireball. Which was understandably concerning.
所以有时火柴头会飞起来，变成一个小火球。这确实令人担忧。
Everything was flammable back then! Within ten years, though, a bunch of people independently came up with an idea for a better match.
当时一切都是可燃的！十年间，很多人为更好的火柴提出很多想法。
They replaced the antimony sulfide with white phosphorus one of the few different forms pure phosphorus
他们用白磷代替了硫化锑，白磷是纯磷所能采取的几种不同形式中的一种，
can take which took much less heat to ignite and was therefore much more reliable.
它燃烧时消耗的热量要少得多，因此更可靠。
Soon, phosphorus match factories went into production all over the world. And then the case reports started rolling in:
很快，世界各地的磷火柴厂纷纷投入生产。然后病例报告开始滚滚而来：
Factory workers were developing what would soon become known as phossy jaw.
工厂工人很快患上了磷毒性颌骨坏死。
The disease led to severe infections and caused the patient's bones to rot often starting with the jawbone.
该疾病导致了严重感染，导致病人的骨头腐烂，通常从下颚骨开始。
At the time, the only real treatment was to remove any damaged bones
那时，唯一的治疗方法是移除坏死骨
and hope the infection wouldn't spread to the brain and turn fatal.
并希望感染不会蔓延至大脑并导致死亡。
It became clear that the problem had something to do with the white phosphorus they were working with.
很明显，这个问题和他们工作时使用的白磷有关。
Around one in ten workers on the factory floor developed phossy jaw within five years of exposure, while the office workers were unaffected.
在工厂工作的工人中，大约十分之一的人在五年内患上了磷毒性颌骨坏死，而办公室职员则没有受到影响。
And it turns out white phosphorus is really reactive,
事实证明白磷是非常活跃的，
so it was combining with water vapor and carbon dioxide in the workers' breath
因此，它与工人呼吸中的水蒸气和二氧化碳
as well as amino acids in their saliva to create bisphosphonates. These compounds suppress a type of bone cell called osteoclasts,
以及唾液中的氨基酸结合，产生了双磷酸盐。这些化合物抑制一种叫做破骨细胞的骨细胞，
whose job is to break down and reabsorb regular bone tissue. So essentially, bisphosphonates keep bones from replenishing themselves.
其功能是分解和重新吸收正常的骨组织。所以本质上，双磷酸盐会阻止骨骼自我补充。
And that lack of replenishment is more of a problem for bones with fast cell turnover rates—like the jawbone.
对于细胞更新速度快的骨骼（比如下颚骨）来说，缺乏补充是一个更大的问题。
So in the presence of bisphosphonates, the jawbone would start to die. And about 20% of the time, so would the patient.
所以在双磷酸盐存在的情况下，颌骨会开始坏死。20%的情况下，病人也会这样。
Lower class workers around the world knew this was happening. So did their doctors, and at least some of the general public.
世界各地的下层工人都知道这一点。他们的医生也知道，至少一些普通民众是如此。
I mean, Charles Dickens was writing about it in 1852.
我是说，查尔斯·狄更斯在1852年就写过。
But factories in the mid-19th century weren't exactly known for their concern about factory workers.
但在19世纪中叶，工厂并不关心工人的健康。
And for decades, very little changed.
几十年来，几乎没有什么改变。
Then, in 1888, a match factory in London took things a step too far and proved themselves to be especially terrible.
然后再1888年，伦敦一家火柴厂做得太过火了，结果证明他们自己特别糟糕。
That spurred a local socialist and activist, Annie Besant, to write about the horrible conditions in the factory
这促使当地的社会主义者和活动家安妮·贝桑特写了关于工厂可怕环境的文章
which, in addition to the health risk, also included long hours, low pay, and fines if a worker so much as dropped a match.
除了健康风险外，还包括工作时间长、工资低，如果一个工人掉了一根火柴就会被罚款。
In response, the owners of the factory tried to get the workers to sign a statement saying they were perfectly happy with life there.
作为回应，这家工厂的老板试图让工人们签署一份声明，表示他们对工厂环境非常满意。
They refused, and when one of the workers was fired, all fourteen hundred of them
他们拒绝了，当其中一名工人被解雇时，
went on what would become known as the Matchstick Girls' Strike.
他们所有的1400人都参加了后来被称为火柴女孩的罢工。
The strike finally called the world's attention to the phossy jaw problem.
最终这次罢工吸引了全世界对磷毒性颌骨坏死的关注。
