Defence Index of Medical Reports and Articles on Asbestos, "CI v. CJM" (1983)

A 79-page typed litigation index headed "I - CI v CJM, G. Defence, Index," revised in November 1983, listing medical reports and articles under the heading "CI had or was deemed to have knowledge, c) Public notoriety." It runs year by year from 1902 (Adelaide Anderson's and Thomas Oliver's chapters in Dangerous Trades) through 1980, giving source, author and title for several hundred items, then lists medical reference bibliographies and, in a separate section, the entries on asbestosis in dictionaries and encyclopedias from 1947 to 1971. Handwritten ticks, crosses and file numbers mark which items had been found.

What it shows

"CJM" is probably Canadian Johns-Manville, and the British spelling "Defence," the Toronto law firm Blake, Cassels and the Montreal Public Library named as sources point to a Canadian lawsuit. As a defence index, it was probably built to show that the plaintiff, "CI," knew or should be taken to have known of asbestos disease from published sources. The list is a useful map of what was in print about asbestos and disease, and when: Zeckwer's 1924 report of mesothelioma of the pleura, the British Medical Journal's 1927 to 1929 papers on pulmonary asbestosis, Merewether and Price in 1930, Lynch and Smith on lung cancer in asbestosis in 1935, and the conference papers of the 1960s and 1970s.