302 SLEEPING SICKNESS [CH. 



that in Martinique the infection was certainly not contagious. 

 Dr Corre, in 1876, gave a good description of the disease as 

 observed in the Senegal and attributed it to a kind of ergotism, 

 or scrofula, and to the moral condition of the people. In 

 addition he describes the ravages of sleeping sickness in the 

 Senegambia, where whole villages had been swept away and 

 many towns abandoned as a result of " Nelavane," the local 

 name for the disease. 



Mense, in 1885 to 1887, found sleeping sickness widely 

 distributed throughout the navigable reaches of the Congo 

 as far up as the Stanley Pools, and the disease had not been 

 lately introduced into this region for it was well known by the 

 natives. In 1871, the first case of this disease appeared on 

 the banks of Quanza, in Angola, and since that date thousands 

 of victims have been claimed and numerous villages abandoned. 



Until this outbreak in Angola, for many generations sleep- 

 ing sickness seems to have been confined to certain parts of 

 the west coast of Africa, especially the Congo, which also 

 formed its southernmost limit, and the Senegambia. Although 

 the disease has now spread to the south into Angola, up to the 

 present the region of the Gambia still forms its northern limit, 

 and it is interesting to note that the natives of this region have 

 a superstition that sleeping sickness came from the provinces 

 to the south of them. 



In the eighties of the last century, the malady was still 

 restricted to the west of Africa, but after this date began that 

 opening up of Africa, that has resulted in sleeping sickness 

 spreading inland as far as Uganda and the great lakes. It is 

 believed that unwittingly Stanley, the African Explorer, was 

 responsible for the introduction of the disease into the lake 

 region during his expedition for the relief of Emin Pasha. In 

 1887, Stanley travelled up the Congo with a large force 

 and eventually reached the shores of Lake Albert Nyanza 

 where he found Emin Pasha. Regarding this expedition 

 Mense states : " Stanley's expedition for the relief of Emin 

 Pasha, which travelled in 1888 from the Congo to the Nile, and 

 which hired carriers from the Lower and Middle Congo, must 

 certainly have brought many infected men along with it to the 



