^g4 SCIENCE IN AFRICA 



microscopists, arrives in a village and examines every individual. 

 Other diseases as well as sleeping sickness are noted on each per- 

 son's card. The second section, in charge of the native auxiliary 

 doctor, follows, and establishes a temporary treatment centre for 

 each group of three or four villages. The auxiliary doctor may 

 establish a dozen or so of these treatment centres and visits them 

 once a week. All patients suffering from sleeping sickness or other 

 curable diseases come to the centres for injections at regular inter- 

 vals until the disease is stamped out of the neighbourhood. By this 

 means it is proposed to clear up one area after another, and as 

 each is vacated it is left for the ordinary system of medical centres 

 and dispensaries to keep observation on sleeping sickness in case 

 of a further outbreak. The training centre for the native personnel 

 for this special sleeping sickness work is at Ouagadougou, where 

 three Europeans, including a bacteriologist and an entomologist, 

 are permanently resident. 



In each colony, moreover, a reserve of personnel, tents, and sani- 

 tary material is maintained at the chief medical headquarters to 

 deal with epidemics. The whole forms a complete portable hos- 

 pital which can be transferred at very short notice to an infected 

 area. This system is used chiefly for epidemics of plague and yellow 

 fever, and has been developed since plague was introduced to 

 Senegal in 1914, and reached its climax with the devastating 

 epidemic of 1927. Since then a great reduction of the disease has 

 been effected through the use of these hospital camps. 



For research purposes reliance is placed largely on the Pasteur 

 Institute, which has branches at Tunis, Dakar, at Kindia in Guinea, 

 Brazzaville in French Equatorial Africa, and Tananarive in Mada- 

 gascar. These are widely consulted by the colonial medical organiz- 

 ation, and perform many routine functions such as the preparation 

 of vaccine for plague, yellow fever and other diseases. The Insti- 

 tute at Dakar for which a large building v/as recently completed, 

 is in charge of General Mattisse, and provides all the yellow fever 

 vaccine for the French African colonies, made, according to the 

 Laigret method, from the brains of white mice. In addition, there 

 is a bacteriological laboratory at Bamako in the Sudan, with a 

 staff of a French doctor and five African infirmiers, which produces 

 vaccines for rabies, smallpox, and tuberculosis, approximating in 



