On April 21, 1956, a 5-year-old girl was brought to the Chisso Corporation factory hospital in Minamata, Japan, after developing a frightening combination of symptoms. She could barely walk, her speech had become slurred and she was suffering convulsions, leaving doctors unsure what they were dealing with. Two days later, her younger sister arrived at the same hospital with almost identical symptoms. When their mother told doctors that a neighbour's daughter was also experiencing similar problems, physicians began visiting homes across the surrounding area to investigate. They found 8 more patients showing the same strange neurological symptoms, suggesting that whatever was happening was not an isolated illness. On May 1, the hospital reported the cases to the local public health office as an epidemic of an unknown disease affecting the central nervous system. That investigation marked the beginning of the discovery of what became known as Minamata disease, one of Japan's worst industrial pollution disasters.
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