Abstract
A haemo -parasitic disease with secondary changes
in the lymphatic and central nervous systems, terminating
in coma and death and due to the presence in
the blood, gland juice and cerebrospinal fluid of the Trypanosoma
Gambiense.
This disease, known for several years in the
Congo as Sleeping Sickness, or Negro lethargy, was
attributed to various causes, by some to a miasm
arising from the infected locality, by others to contagion
from eating from a common bowl, etc.
Natives of Uganda also firmly believe that it
is conveyo,i by sexual coitus from an infected to a
sound person, and this view has also been put forward
as a contributory cause by Professor Robert Koch and
receives colour from analogy to the "mal du dour:ino"
of horses. This, however, is, I feel sure, an
error, as on carefully investigating this point in
my recent researches in Uganda, I failed entirely to
find a single case in support, which could stand
close examination. Invariably other possibilities
of infection were admitted. As regards Prof. Koch's
statements, dici they not come from so eminent an
authority one would brush them aside, but the possible
fallacies were so many that the statement cannot
be seriously taken. To indicate only two, Koch
had to rely on native interpreters and entirely on
native statements as to their movements. Anyone
with the least experience of trying to get information
through interpreters will be aware of the difficulties
attending, especially when dealing with
sexual matters, and native statements at best are
notoriously unreliable, as a native almost invariably
attempts to give a pleasing answer, and one
which he thinks is expected.
Secondly, Prof. Koch states that the Baziba
women he saw said they had never left their country
to accompany their husbands. While this may be
true of those particular ones, which I doubt, I know
as a fact that numbers of Baziha women were with
their men folk who were rubber cutters in the Sesse
group of islands,where, as I shall show later, the
possibilities and probabilities of infection were
enormous, owing to the peculiar distribution of the
carrier, Glossina Palpalis. A subsidiary consider_'
ation is the fact that sexual impotence in both
sexes is a very early symptom, as will be dealt with
later.