Cavanagh , John Barr , b 1921 , Director of the Medical Research Council Group in Applied Neurophysiology

It consists of various papers deliberately assembled by Professor Cavanagh on the subject of Minamata Disease, a neurological disorder caused by methyl mercury poisoning of which there was an epidemic at Minamata Bay in Japan in the 1950s due to industrial pollution of the water. It includes a number of original papers accumulated by Dr Douglas McAlpine who conducted the 1958 investigation at Minamata with Dr S Araki of Kumamto, and also later correspondence of Cavanagh with McAlpine himself and others who help to elucidate the nature and causation of the disease in order to discover the various contributions.