Letters: Calcutta quake
Jeff Hecht reports on Roger Bilham’s belief that the 1737 Calcutta earthquake should not be included in lists of major earthquakes (This Week, 16 April). However, my studies have led me to conclude that an earthquake undoubtedly did occur near Calcutta in 1737.
The Gentleman’s Magazine of June 1738 stated that an earthquake and a cyclone occurred near Calcutta on 30 September 1737. The local newspaper The Bengal Consultations report of 15 October 1737 gave an official death toll figure of 3000 in the combined disaster.
Later, in 1837, J. R. Martin noted the event in his medical topography of Calcutta, without referring to prior reports. My analysis indicates that the primary source of information for subsequent historians is this report by Martin, who gave the date of the occurrence as 11 October 1737 and cited a death toll of 300 000. But according to the Cambridge History of India (1987), the estimated population of Calcutta was about 120 000 in 1757 and less than 200 000 in the early 19th century. So the report of 300 000 deaths is unbelievable.
The main confusion about the event is due to the reports of two different dates and different death tolls. From the foregoing, the official death figure of 3000 seems reliable. From the historical source, the date of occurrence was 30 September 1737. The Gregorian calendar was not in use in the British Empire in those days. This date is, therefore, the date from the Julian calendar then in vogue. It matches very well with the Gregorian equivalent date of 11 October 1737.
Pitta Govinda Rao Climatic Research Unit University of East Anglia
Letters: Espouse Esperanto
I could work out what your inventive correspondents Wendy Ashby and Ron Clark (Letters, 7 May) had written, without recourse to the English version. Yes, there is a need for an international language and it is not beyond the wit of mankind to devise one and agree on its use.
Esperanto has been used for many years in speech and writing between people of different mother tongues. There really does not seem much purpose in reviving Hogben’s Interglossa.
Hilary Chapman Conwy, Gwynedd
Letters: Turing's teaching
My transatlantic colleague Rodney Brooks includes among his talents an impressive quality of gusto (‘Birth of a human robot’, 14 May). This leads occasionally to flights of overinclusiveness, as when he lays claim across the board to the authority of Alan Turing for his own ideas on developing intelligence in machines.
He is right that Turing was sympathetic towards an ’embodied approach, where an intelligence would be allowed to develop through the experience of sight, sound and touch’. But he is quite wrong to suggest that this held for Turing more appeal than ‘disembodied’ studies or more appeal than the notion of using symbolic logic to program intelligent machines that use symbolic logic 鈥� a proposition quite opposed to the antisymbolist spirit that animates Rodney Brooks’s endeavour.
Donald Michie University of Oxford
Letters: Chewed burgers
Hamburgers are possibly the most successful food to be introduced this century, but has anyone stopped to consider why?
Could this be the reason? Our ancestors hunted in packs, and returned to their young, sick and elderly with a present of a mouth full of chewed meat. (This is of course the origin of our greeting of a kiss.)
A hamburger is a pretty good replica of a mouthful of chewed meat 鈥� the bun represents the mouth, the tomato sauce the blood to show that it is fresh, and the meat appears to be chewed. Even herbivores like me enjoy a vegeburger with oodles of ketchup.
We also seem to enjoy two different types of meals 鈥� formal dinners with a real joint of meat, and convenience ones with hamburgers. Could this be analogous to the hunting pack eating the carcass, and the chewed remains being brought back to the nonhunting members of the pack? We do not like to mix the two meals, and get quite upset if someone wants a hamburger instead of the Sunday roast.
Perhaps some of your readers more qualified than me would care to comment, and explain the popularity of crisps and pizzas.
Rod Parks Woodstock, Oxford
Letters: Lawyers love it
Tam Dalyell is right to lament the intransigence of the US in refusing to move to a first-to-file system of patent law (Forum, 16 April), but the reasons he cites for opposing the first-to-invent system do not reveal the true horrors of the current American law and its real impact on inventors.
The central feature of a first-to-invent system of patent law is that it is inherently uncertain. As Dalyell indicates, it is never easy to prove when you first thought of something. The main disadvantage is not that work done outside the US is not taken into account when determining who is the first to invent (although this is grossly discriminatory); it is that the system offers US companies the opportunity to challenge otherwise sound patent rights on the spurious grounds that they were the ‘first to invent’.
This means that if inventors wants to protect their rights in the US, they must embark upon lengthy and expensive legal proceedings in the Supreme Court. In effect, it means that individuals or small companies can be bullied into relinquishing their rights by large organisations which can afford such action: ‘We both know you invented it, but can you afford to prove it in court?’
In fact, the first-to-invent system also results in many disadvantages for US industry. So why do they continue to use it? The answer is simple. All this uncertainty creates lots of lovely litigation 鈥� a lawyer’s paradise; and as we all know, if the lawyers are happy, the US is happy.
Paul Leonard Chemical Industries Association London
Letters: Tiring problem
I would like to correct Renee Twombly’s article on chronic fatigue syndrome (‘The trouble with ME,’ 14 May) which said that I use the term ME to describe ‘CFS-like disorders believed to have a biological basis’.
The name myalgic encephalomyelitis refers to a specific entity which has its own code in the WHO’s International Classification of Diseases, Volume 10. Chronic fatigue syndrome, however, is an umbrella term which covers a multitude of ills, including ‘psychological’ problems like depression, anxiety and ‘stress’, as well as ‘physical’ disorders like chronic mononucleosis, giardiasis and allergies.
In a sense, ME is to chronic fatigue syndrome what migraine is to headaches. It’s a subgroup, with a characteristic pattern of symptoms and a more complex aetiology.
The tendency to use the same term to describe quite different conditions has led to a ridiculous situation where almost everyone is right. Thus researchers studying ME are probably correct in maintaining that this illness may be due to a faulty immune response. However, psychiatrists whose fatigued patients suffer from depression or overwork are equally right when stating that the underlying problem relates to mental illness or ‘stress’. Unfortunately, as long as doctors continue to overlook the differences between the various ‘fatigue syndromes’, the controversy and confusion which surrounds ME will remain with us for many years to come.
Finally, may I point out that I am not the Director of the International Federation of ME Associations, but the director of its information unit.
Ellen Goudsmit International Federation of ME Associations Middlesex
Letters: Tiring problem
Peter Behan suggests that heavy metals and other factors may cause enzyme malfunction, thus disrupting cellular energy production, leading to CFS/ME. Mercury and other heavy metals are well-known enzyme inhibitors, and the WHO consider dental amalgam to be the single largest source of mercury exposure for the general population. In animal experiments, placement of amalgam fillings induces a significant increase in bacteria resistant to mercury and antibiotics in the oral and intestinal flora, and a substantial reduction in kidney function, indicating toxic or immunological effects.
Even other metals used in dental restorations may induce deviant immunological reactions. Employing a recently developed in vitro assay for detection of metal-specific memory lymphocytes, a Swedish group found high lymphocyte reactivity towards mercury, gold, palladium and also lead in up to 55 per cent of the individuals tested in a group of CFS patients. Thirty-six of the patients who tested positive had their metal restorations removed, and 28 (77 per cent) of them have reported health improvement.
Thus CFS/ME may be linked to heavy metal exposure from dental restorations.
Harald Hamre Oslo, Norway
Letters: Tiring problem
Many doctors still regard ME as a psychosocial disorder and consequently offer management advice which is either inappropriate or harmful. Such inaccurate classification can also result in a refusal of sickness/disability benefits and conflict with employers and educational authorities 鈥� neither of which are going to be beneficial in promoting recovery.
To try and improve the medical management of patients with ME, I have produced a booklet for health professionals which reviews current drug therapies, appropriate lifestyle modification, and a critical assessment of treatments on offer from the alternative health sector. Copies are now available free from the ME Association, Stanhope House, Stanford le Hope, Essex SS17 0HA.
Charles Shepherd Gloucestershire
Letters: Fascist threat
For the first time in a generation the Nazis are a threat across Europe. In Italy for the first time since the war fascists have achieved a place in government. In France, Germany and Russia far-right groups have gained widespread support.
In this country the British National Party has been trying to gain a similar foothold. Racist attacks trebled in Tower Hamlets after Derek Beackon was elected. There have been 15 victims of racist murders over the last two years. That Beackon failed to hold on to his Isle of Dogs seat and the BNP failed to make the breakthrough they had hoped for elsewhere in the country was in no small part due to the relentless exposure of the BNP by the Anti Nazi League.
However, there should be no room for complacency. The BNP are standing candidates in the European elections. All the conditions that have allowed Nazism to grow in other European countries still exist in Britain.
We believe that scientists everywhere should be alarmed at the growth of Nazism. Science is a force which should be used for the good of humanity, but under Hitler it was used only to promote war and barbarism. Thousands of concentration camp victims were subjected to horrific experiments by the Nazis. Many scientists, most famously Albert Einstein, were persecuted by Hitler. At the same time, Nazis have often sought to use pseudo-scientific theories to back up their racist views.
The Nazis can be stopped. The thousands of people who attended the recent ANL carnival show the strength of opposition to the BNP. 杏吧原创s Against the Nazis has been launched as part of the ANL’s campaign to make sure that everywhere the BNP try to spread their racist and violent message they are opposed.
We would like to invite every scientist who is concerned about the Nazi threat to consider joining or sponsoring 杏吧原创s Against the Nazis. Further details can be obtained via the Anti Nazi League (PO Box 2566, London N4 2HG 鈥� Tel 071 924 0333).
Nicholas Gay, Nigel Holder, Steve Jones, Tony Lai, Paul Nurse, John Parrington, Suzanne Phillips, Martin Raff, Fred Sanger, Karl Swann, Maurice Wilkins 杏吧原创s Against the Nazis, London