<346 BANTU NEGROES 



Africa, where it has long been in existence. The disease is characterised 

 by a gradually increasing drowsiness and prostration, which soon render it 

 impossible for the sufferer to carry on any of his usual duties. In its 

 later stages he becomes continually somnolent, and ultimately unconscious. 

 The disease comes on in a slow and insidious manner, and may last tor 

 two or even three years. The result seems to be invariably fatal, no 

 authentic case of recovery from the disease having yet been published (I 

 quote from Dr. A. R. Cook). In 1901 200 persons on the Island of 

 Buvuma died of this disease, which has now extended its ravages as 

 far east as the Nandi Plateau. The Baganda fear the sleeping sickness a 

 greal deal more than smallpox. The disease appears to be caused by an 

 organic alteration in the structure of the brain, and it is accompanied in 

 nearly every case by the presence of a peculiar and active little worm in the 

 blood known as Filaria perstans. Enteric, cholera, scarlet fever, diphtheria 

 are up to the present moment unknown to the Baganda, nor do they 

 apparently suffer from nervous diseases. Epilepsy is rare, and insanity 

 still more uncommon. Facial paralysis sometimes occurs as a sequela of 

 malarial fever. Diseases of the liver are rare. Dyspepsia and various 

 affections of the digestive organs are common owing to the "gross and 

 filthy habits of the natives" (Dr. R. U. Moffat)— that is to say, the 

 natives are so careless in the way in which they give full rein to their 

 appetite for large quantities of food that, even with their strong digestions, 

 they suffer from dyspepsia and diarrhoea. 



All things considered, it must be agreed that the Baganda have 

 certainly their share of this world's troubles. They live in a beautiful 

 and exceedingly fertile country, which is. however, not healthy for either 

 Europeans or natives. In a measure they have become inured to its 

 special type of malarial fever, though they suffer almost as much from fever 

 as do Europeans if they proceed to another part of tropical Africa. There 

 is. of course, an enormous death-rate among the children, who are very 

 badly looked after by their mothers. One point must be stated emphatically 

 in favour of the Baganda. They are one of the few Negro races who 

 attempt anything like sanitary measures to keep their surroundings free 

 from filth. They are often dirty in their persons, and sufficiently careless 

 about their food and drinking water to justify Dr. Moffat's allusion to their 

 *' gross and filthy habits"; but they attempt as a rule to keep their 

 houses clean, and the surroundings of their houses very clean. Before 

 ever the influence of European civilisation was felt they had (unlike all 

 the surrounding tribes) instituted the plan of the construction and use of 

 privies for pmrposes of defecation. Nearly everywhere else where I have 

 travelled in Africa, with the exception, perhaps, of Muhammadan Africa 

 and certain countries like I bo and Old Calabar near the mouth of the 



