THE UGANDA EPIDEMIC 7 



with their followers, and eventually were brought into 

 Uganda itself to be under control. 



In July 1901, Dr. Albert Cook of the Church Missionary 

 Society at Mengo (Kampala) noted eight cases of a mys- 

 terious disease, and six months later reported that on 

 Buvuma Island over two hundred natives had died and 

 thousands appeared to be infected. The mortality 

 became appalling, and the Government were at their 

 wits' end, for it seemed as if the whole population was 

 doomed. 



In July 1902, the first Royal Society Commission arrived 

 in Uganda, composed of Drs. Low, Christie, and Castellani, 

 and Colonel Sir David Bruce arrived in February 1903. 

 On April 28th, it was announced that the disease was 

 caused by a Trypanosome and conveyed by a Tse-tse fly, 

 Glossina palpalis.^ 



It was suggested at once that as the haunts of this 

 fly were strictly limited, it would be easy to check the 

 disease by removing the population ; ^ but the natives, 

 with their characteristic fatalism, refused to leave their 

 villages along the shores of the lake. In the mean- 

 time the disease raged unchecked, and by the end of 1903 

 the number of deaths had reached over 90,000 ; whole 

 villages were being depopulated, and great tracts of 

 highly cultivated country relapsed into scrub and forest. 



In March 1905 Lieutenant Tulloch, R.A.M.C, who 

 had been sent out by the Royal Society to help in the 

 investigations, became infected with the disease in its 

 virulent form, and died a few months later. 



By November 1904 the epidemic had appeared on 

 the shores of Lake Albert in North-West Uganda, and a 

 survey of Uganda by six specially appointed medical 

 officers in 1905 showed that the banks of the lakes and 



^ Reports of Sleeping Sickness Conunission of the Royal Society, 

 1903, Nos. I, IV. 

 * See Bulletin of Sleeping Sickness Bureau, vol. 4, pp. 241-2. 



