521

THE LANCET.

LONDON: SATURDAY, SEPTEMBER 8, 1923.

THE EARTHQUAKE IN JAPAN.THE appalling disaster which befell the middle

island of Japan last Saturday has evoked the activesympathy of the civilised world. The disaster wasnot without precedent or altogether unexpected.There is a yearly average of 96 perceptible shocks inTokio, and every Japanese boy or girl is brought upto expect one severe earthquake in his or her lifetime.It was after the last severe quake in Tokio that theseismographic station was opened which has added somuch to our knowledge of movements in the earth’scrust, but shock followed shock so rapidly on Saturdaythat the instruments can only have recorded their owndestruction. Position on a low seaboard still further

imperils Japanese cities, situated, as they already are,on a direct line of stress, the result of a speciallysharp fold in the earth’s crust ; for, just as in Calabria,at San Francisco, and’ on the Mexican seaboard,shock was followed by fire, and fire by tidal wave.The great Indian earthquake of 1897 which crosseda continent would have produced fearful devastationhad not the country traversed been wild and sparselypopulated. We may trust that the high level ofcivilisation was sufficient to prevent the mad orgyof riot and rapine which has followed on such

catastrophes under less favourable circumstances,for the rapid development of Japanese culture hashardly been less astonishing than the local changes inthe earth’s crust which caused the disaster. Immunityfrom considerable vibration during recent years hadmade experts apprehensive that seismic disturb-ance, when it should reappear, might be of specialseverity.The Eastern island empire stands in special relation

medically to our own, for it is one of the two countries,Italy being the other, with which complete medicalreciprocity has been established, and reference to theforeign section of the Medical Register shows theextent to which advantage has been taken of thismutual concession. During the last few years a

number of important scientific announcements haveoriginated from Japanese universities, which are bothnumerous and well equipped ; reminder is scarcelyneeded in regard to the pioneer work on experimentaltar cancer of YAMAGIwA, ICHIKAWA, and TsuTSUI,.and the discovery, after much painstaking research, ofthe spirochæte of infectious jaundice, associated withthe names of INADA, IDO, HOKI, KANEKO, and ITO.We have received only this week the first imposingvolume of a series of scientific reports from theGovernment Institute for Infectious Diseases at theTokio Imperial University, of which Prof. MATARONAGAYO is director. This work, which has alreadyappeared in the Japanese Journal of ExperimentalMedicine, is now made accessible for the commonstock of medical knowledge by the decision of theInstitute to publish an account of all research in someEuropean language; and a large part of this admirablyprinted and illustrated volume is in English. We haveyet to learn whether the disaster will be a serioussetback to scientific work in Tokio, nor do we yetknow to what extent the scientific workers have

perished with their universities and institutes, butthe motto of those who survive will, we feel sure, bethat of Italy after the Calabrian disaster, whenSign. MARCORA quoted, amidst the applause of theItalian deputies, the words " Post fata resurgo."In the present case, should rehabilitation be required,medical and scientific friends in this country will

gladly render any aid at their disposal.

PASTEURISED MILK.THE prime importance of milk as a food has been

emphasised of late by the exponents of what is knownas the " newer nutrition," while medical officers ofhealth, on the other hand, have not ceased to putprominently before the public the dangers of a

contaminated milk-supply. It is not surprising,therefore, that discussions as to the best policy toadopt for the purpose of obtaining a safe milk-supplyhave occupied a large part of the time of recent

sanitary congresses. At the National Milk Conferenceheld at the Guildhall last year there were doughtyprotagonists of clean raw milk from tuberculin-testedherds and of adequately pasteurised milk, whileperhaps the surprise of the conference was the generalendorsement by leading medical authorities of thevalue of a third form of safe milk, which did notappear on the programme-namely, dried milk. TheNational Clean Milk Society has convened a furtherconference at the Guildhall in November next toconsider pasteurisation. The appearance is thereforeopportune of a report on the Pasteurisation of Milkby Dr. J. M. HAMILL, a medical officer of the Ministryof Health. This report, of which a summary was givenin THE-LANCET of August 18th (p. 338), puts the caseclearly and reasonably for pasteurisation as definedby the new regulations-that is to say, milk whichhas been exposed once for 30 minutes to a temperaturebetween 145-150° F. (63-66° C.). Milk so treatedis rendered reasonably safe as regards the risk of

transmitting disease ; the pathogenic organisms liableto be found in milk are, with the exception of thetubercle bacillus, killed by the process, and that

organism, if not killed, appears to be so attenuatedas to become harmless. This appears from the resultsof an important and laborious investigation by Dr.F. W. CAMPBELL BROWN, printed in the same issue,which may be regarded as settling once for all thethermal death-point of the tubercle bacillus in milk.The difficulty of striking the happy point wheresterilisation is sufficient and heat deterioration hasnot set in is also manifest in the report on condensedmilk, which is summarised in another column. In

many cases a few spores remain without doingharm.The effect of pasteurisation on the chemical and

physical characters of milk must also be considered.Taste and flavour are scarcely altered. At 145° F.(62’80 C.) the separation of cream is affected but little ;at 148° F. (64’40 C.), however, the cream line may bedecreased by 40 per cent. This in itself is unimportant;in fact, one of the advantages of homogenised milk isthat the cream will not separate. At 145° F. (62-8° C.)the milk proteins are unaltered, but at 150° F.(65’60 C.) 5 per cent. of the albumin is coagulated.There is no evidence that coagulated albumin inpasteurised or dried milk is more difficult to digest,just as there is no reason to suppose that the whiteof a raw egg is more digestible than the white of aboiled egg. The enzymes are slightly a&ected. butwe do not know if that is a drawback. Junket canbe made more easily from pasteurised milk. The