^^^ SCIENCE IN AFRICA 



is pointed out that many hygienic native customs, which are most 

 valuable in preventing the spread of disease, are disintegrating 

 under the spread of civilization. Hut tax, for instance, tends to 

 reduce the number of huts occupied by a family, and hence affects 

 the isolated mode of life mentioned above. It also reduces the 

 practice adopted by many tribes of erecting a separate hut for the 

 isolation of a sick person. The scarcity of timber in many areas is 

 assisting this same effect, and huts in which a death has taken 

 place are now often reinhabited instead of being burnt. 



Tuberculosis has also been investigated recently in Tanganyika, 

 the Sudan, and Zanzibar. Dr. C. Wilcocks (Lyle Cummins 1935), 

 a member of the Tanganyika medical service, is conducting 

 research into the disease by survey work in that territory under 

 the auspices of the Colonial Development Fund. Captain S. M. 

 Burrows and Dr. R. J. Matthews, as Dorothy Temple Cross Medi- 

 cal Fellows, have prepared reports on the Sudan and Zanzibar 

 respectively (Lyle Cummins 1935). Professor Lyle Cummins com- 

 pares their conclusions with those of the South African work, which 

 they bear out and enlarge in a remarkable way. He points out that the 

 actual distribution of tuberculosis has now been worked out by means 

 of intradermal tuberculin tests, among a num.berofdifferentpeoples, 

 including coastal and inland natives in South Africa, inhabitants 

 of Zanzibar, inland natives of Tanganyika (near Moshi), and a 

 section of the isolated Dinka tribe of the Bahr-el-Ghazal. The per- 

 centage of positive cases in each community varies from 81 in parts 

 of South Africa to 32-7 in the Dinka. It is clear that while tuber- 

 culosis infection is already widely distributed in Africa, its intensity 

 varies directly with the opportunities of outside contact and in- 

 versely with tribal isolation. On the whole, the results support the 

 contention that tuberculosis must have been very rare among the 

 African races under their primitive conditions of life, and that it is 

 tending to become widely diffused under the new conditions im- 

 posed by the penetration of European civilization and industry 

 into native communities. In East Africa, the penetration ofEastern 

 civilization also plays its part, as pointed out by Spearman (1933), 

 and in this connection. Dr. B. O. Wilkins is at present studying the 

 incidence of tuberculosis among the Asiatic inhabitants of Dar-es- 

 Salaam. 



