Kochi Prefecture is noted for its high mortality rate attributable to degenerative diseases. Among them, cardiovascular disease takes the heaviest toll of lives.
In quest of risk factors associated with the scourge, we probed into its possible relations with lipid in the blood, specifically with total serum cholesterol levels. At the same time, we took note of nutritional aspects.
Our study found that the cardiovascular death rate has a negative correlation to total serum cholesterol levels and that the subjects who scored low total cholesterol values were exceedingly ill-fed as compared with ordinary people.
This finding suggests that, in Kochi Prefecture, the lowering of total serum cholesterol levels triggered off by unbalanced nutritional conditions may increase the chance of succumbing to car-diovascular disease.

The result of our general and medical survey are summarized as follows:
1) More than half the number of visitors to this spa are those who live in Yamagata Prefecture, and the rest are inhabitants of neighboring prefectures. Compared with the reports of our previous surveys, the number of inhabitants of neighboring prefectures is larger. Farmers are the largest in number, and their ages range from 20 to 60.
2) Considering the fact that more than half the number of spa visitors come here with therapeutic or convalescing purpose, this spa be said to be a spa where the sole object of visitors should be the hot spring curative treatment.
3) Form the viewpoint of classification of diseases, it may be said that patients with rheumatism and neuralgia are more than half the number, followed by those with the diseases of the stomach. This clearly shows the reason why this spa is called “the hot spring for rheumatism and neuralgia”.
4) More than half the number of spa visitors stay for about 2 weeks, and most of them take bath 5 to 6 times a day for curative treatment. Generally the spa visitors tend to bathe in excess.
5) 37.4% of the spa visitors drink hot spring water for curative treatment and this rate of drinking cure is higher than that in our previous reports.
6) Only 5.7% come to the spa under doctors' direction. 31.6% of them are conscious of the bathing reaction, symptoms of which are headache, feeling of weakness, anorexia, constipation, etc.
7) Observation of the effect of hot spring bathing on Thorn's test shows that in the larger number of patients with rheumatism and neuralgia the rate of decrease in eosinophilic leucocyte count becomes clearly higher after single bathing, but in healthy persons it is not uniform. And observation of changes in these rate of variations after succesive curative bathing reveals that in the group in whom the rate of decrease is low at the beginning of the bathing the vate tends to become higher after a week of curative bathing, while in the group in whom the rate of decrease is high it tends to become lower.