NAGANA AND SLEEPING SICKNESS 23 



actual cause of the disease ** Nagana " was a Trypanosome 

 which was named brucei after its discoverer, and was taken 

 up by a Tse-tse when it fed on the blood of an animal 

 suffering from nagana. It was believed that the fly 

 inoculated the Trypanosome into a fresh animal when it 

 fed again in the same manner that a vaccinator introduces 

 the lymph on the point of his lancet, that is to say, by 

 direct inoculation. Thus in the case of Nagana we 

 have started with the carrier of the disease and found 

 the germ which it carried. 



When the problem of Sleeping Sickness became so 

 acute in Uganda, the Royal Society sent out a Commission 

 in investigate the disease, and the members arrived in 

 Uganda in July 1902. But the first step towards the 

 elucidation had already been made in West Africa. In 

 1901 an Englishman in charge of a steamer on the Gambia 

 river was admitted to hospital at Bathurst for " fever," 

 and Dr. Forde found in his blood peculiar organisms 

 whose nature was unknown to him. The patient was 

 sent to Liverpool, and Dr. Dutton recognized the new 

 organism to be a Trypanosome : the patient eventually 

 died at the commencement of 1903. 



In 1902 Drs. Dutton and Todd found Trypanosomes 

 in the blood of several West African negroes suffering 

 from the early stages of what we now know to be Sleeping 

 Sickness, but in those days the condition had not been 

 recognized as connected with that well known disease. 

 This early stage of fever now came to be known as 

 " Trypanosome fever," or " Trypanosomiasis," and in 

 March 1903 Dr. Baker found the Trypanosome in a 

 case in Uganda, ^ though he did not recognize the full 

 importance of this fact. The next development was the 

 finding by Dr. Castellani of Trypanosomes in the cerebro- 

 spinal fluid of a case of Sleeping Sickness in April 1903,^ 



» British Medical Journal, 1903, May 30th, p. 1254. 

 * Proc. Roy. Soc, 1903, vol. Ixxi. pp. 501-8. 



