Physical symptoms of a job

My nana used to work in a pub and one thing I noticed about all the women who worked in pubs in that era (when they used manual beer pumps instead of the electric ones you use now) is that they all had very well developed biceps on one arm but not the other.

I have a friend that does traditional iron working. He does everything he can to try to balance his muscles and his right arm and shoulder is still significantly more developed than his left. I can't imagine how distinct it would be if he didn't go to the gym regularly to try and even out the muscle tone.

I grew up on a farm in Montana where most folks wore wide-brimmed straw "cowboy" hats under the summer sun and Stetson-type wool felt hats when the sun reflects off the snow.

The result is a tan-line as abrupt as a two-tone car above the brows encircling the head.

Many men and women I knew who rode a great deal and wore high-heeled boots tended to develop a slight pigeon-toed walk to go with the faintest hint of bowed legs.

Sounds like you are ready for a 'google images' search. Pick the profession, pick the era, press search.

Looky looky

People who's jobs involved poisonous metals like lead or mercury would start to show the effects of these. For example, the phrase 'mad as a hatter' comes from the fact that hatters of a certain era had a high exposure to mercury, which was used to make hats, somehow. Enamelers, painters, roofers, etc would all be subject to heavy metal poisoning.

Bone carvers were prone to lung problems. As would anyone who's jobs involved fire, smoke, or other small particulates. Millers too.

The biggest way to tell is the callouses on the hand. This is one of the palm reader's best tricks. They can tell you what your job is by looking at your callouses. They do that right away during their act to establish their credibility.

There was a whole stereotype about how female weavers who used foot-pedal looms had excessive libidos because of all the moving their legs.

well you could tell that someone was a secretary or copyist by the callouses on the ends of his index, middle finger and thumb of his right hand, caused by his pen, and the fact that his hands would be otherwise uncalloused. As my fencing instructor likes to say: "I have the lily-white hands of a scholar."

A tailor would have heavy callouses on the tips of his index fingers and thumbs, but few elsewhere.

Basically, think of what tools the job uses, and what part of the hand would be most affected.

When I was a child you could spot the former wire drawers by their lacking one leg, or both.

Oooh, and in moby dick Melville mentioned that the blubber men on the whaling vessel were frequently missing toes.

The best way to figure it out is to try holding the tools that would have been used and moving your body as if you were at work, observe where the tool meets your body, which muscles you use.

As an example, knitting calluses the sides of my index fingers, the tips and the meaty side of the tip of my thumb. My great grandma always knitted with one long needle tucked under one arm, only moving her right arm, and this gave her a locked shoulder, and made the fingers of her left hand turn in with arthritis earlier than the right. My nan has a permanent split down one thumbnail from years of sewing by hand, and both her and I have calluses on our thumb tips, sides of the thumbs and tips of the first 2 fingers of the right hand only from handsewing. Also consider that pursing the lips to hold dozens of pins will make a puckered mouth wrinkle set not dissimilar from that of a chronic smoker.

My dad did a lot of home woodwork, back in the day, with few power tools. He never lost fingers, but his fingertips and nails and knuckles were a mess: gouges, chunks missing, scars. Just from sanding and planes and knives and hand saws. Worse on his left hand, because his right was usually holding the tool.
I imagine it would be the same for a carver, or a maker of small furniture.

Farmers and fishers, if they survive to old age, often develop a type of white skin cancer (uh... I think the medical term is "actinic keratinosis"), on the exposed parts of their skin (face, ears, hands). My grandfather had to have an ear amputated because of that.
There are other types of these 'cancer clusters' related to some professions:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cancer_cluster

I agree with the writer's callous. I've got a rough bump on the left side of the tip of my middle finger of the right hand, from school. Even though it's been nearly a decade since I wrote much by hand, it's still there.

You might also consider scars for cooks (splashes from hot fat, thin white lines where a cut from a sharp knife healed).

A (Al-)chemist or apothecary might have discolorations or stains on his hands. Weighing out small amounts of potassium permanganate ("Condy's crystals"; used to make disinfectant solutions and, at least today in Germany, illegal to sell in large amounts without special reasons) leaves brown stains on your skin. Nitric acid reacts with the keratin in the skin to cause yellow stains, which will peel off a few days later. (It doesn't hurt. When I was in the early parts of studying biochemistry, watching people peel of the dead skin patches during lectures was the way you could always tell who was doing their first year inorganic chemistry course.) Today nitric acid is mostly used to create fertilisers or explosives, but pre-industrialisation, aqua regia would have been used by alchemists and maybe people working with gold (miners, jewelers, artists). Alchmists also used "aqua fortis", which is nitric acid in water.
If you want to know more about the physical results of being an apothecary or chemist, I can ask my mother about it. (She's a 3rd generation pharmacist and interested in the medieval origins of the profession.)

ETA: You might also consider the nutrient supply people from different social strata or regions had access to. For example, a miner or a mountain farmer would be much more likely to develop goiter than someone living near the coast with access to a regular supply of fish and seafood. This is also dependant on the soil. A lot of elderly women here in Eastern Germany had to have their thyroid gland removed because it developed suspicious hot nodules, which is linked to our soil (and therefore the bread and vegetables) containing very little iodine.

Wikipedia tells me the Crusaders often suffered from scurvy. And even though the use of citrus to cure it was known by Vasco da Gama's time, millions of sailors still died of it before the beginning of the industrial era.

I don't know if it helps, but my boyfriend is a chef and he has many scars all over his hands. His finger tips have also suffered nerve damage and his fingerprints aren't as clear anymore.

I would imagine working as a scribe you would also see skin discoloration and ink stains on your hands.

Oh, and I think coal miners are susceptible to red eyes/conjunctivitis.

I worked with horses for a long time - still keep them now - and I have a permenant callus between my ring and little fingers and at the bottom of each finger where it meets the palm pads. I have a farmers tan - mostly wind burn to be honest cause I live in Ireland - which is tanned arms, face and neck and a snow white body. My leg muscles could snap a tree trunk and I tend to, when I don't concentrate, turn my feet out when I walk. I have a couple of broken capillaries on my cheeks from being out side in all weathers. If that's any help.

A guitar player will have tough fingertips on the fret hand, not on the other.

A golfer will have callouses at the base of the fingers on both hands, soft tips, and, if right-handed, a callous at the inside base of the palm, left hand.

"A guitar player will have tough fingertips on the fret hand, not on the other."

True.

And the fingernails on the fretting hand will be very, very short. If the person plays classical guitar, the fingernails on his/her playing hand will be long, carefully shaped, and very well maintained.

A violinist often will have a dark patch under their chin from the constant rubbing of the chin rest.

^^ True. Forgot about that. I knew a few seamstresses (passed away) and they told me of strong hands, arms and shoulders from their jobs.

Mechanics I know always have black blotches on their tough, cracked hands from grease. It is just seemingly permanent after a while.