510 Colonel D-njid Bruce [April 22, 



WEEKLY EVENING MEETING, 

 Friday, April 22, 1904. 



George Matthey, Esq., F.R.S., Vice-President, in the Chair. 



Colonel David Bruce, R.A.M.C. F.R.S. 



Sleeping Sickness in Uganda. 



First allow me to remind you of the general position of Uganda in 

 Central Africa, which is represented in the following map (Fig. 1). 

 The port of entry into the country is Mombasa, the Uganda railway 

 running from here to Victoria Nyanza. On the north-west shore of 

 the lake is Entebbe, the seat of the English Government in the 

 Uganda Protectorate. Kampala, or Mengo, the native capital, lies 

 some 20 miles to the north-east. Uganda proper lies to the north- 

 west of the lake, Ankole and Unyoro to the west of Uganda, and 

 Busoga to the east. The other lakes, Albert Nyanza, Lake Albert 

 Elward and Lake Tanganyika, form the boundary between the 

 Uganda Protectorate and the Congo State. To the east of Busoga is 

 British East Africa. 



The portion of the map which is shaded with horizontal lines 

 represents the part of the country in which sleeping sickness is 

 raging — that is the sleeping sickness area. And first let us consider 

 how the disease was introduced into the country. There are 

 various theories in regard to this. It is quite impossible, in my 

 opinion, that the disease could have been indigenous in the country. 

 None of the chiefs or missionaries, who have been many years in the 

 country, ever saw a case of the disease before the year 1901. In 

 April of that year the Drs. Cook, Medical Missionaries at Kampala, 

 reported the first case. 



It first broke out in the part of the country lying to the east, 

 called Busoga. Dr. Moffatt, C.M.G., the Principal Medical Officer 

 of Uganda, is of opinion that the disease was introduced into this 

 part of the country when Emin Pasha's Soudanese and their wives 

 and followers, numbering some 10,000, were brought into and settled 

 in Busoga. These natives were brought from the edge of the Congo 

 territory lying to the west, and therefore from a country in which 



Note. — The maps, tables and illustrations in this paper are taken, with the 

 permission of the Royal Society, from the Further Report on Sleeping Sickness 

 in Uganda, by Lieut.-Col. David Bruce, R.A.M.C. F.R.S., David Nabarro, M.D.. 

 and Capt. E. D. W. Greig, I.:M.S. (Harrison & Sons, London). 



The illustrations showing the parasites have been kindly lent by the * British 

 Medical Journal.' 



