360 THE MIGHTIEST NIMROD OF MODERN TIMES. 



of danger and endowed him with a courage beyond the limits of 

 the ordinary hunter. 



In the remarkable chapter of medical research now being writ- 

 ten in the opening years of the twentieth century, is that dealing 

 with the fight which is being waged against sleeping sickness, that 

 awful African scourge, the mystery of which continues to baffle 

 scientists. 



The downright, uncompromising dead line of the disease is 

 its most awesome characteristic. The numerous research expedi- 

 tions which have gone out to Uganda under government and private 

 auspices, have got no further than to determine the cause of the 

 trouble, and to alleviate its miseries. Anything like a cure has yet 



to be discovered. 



The population of the area principally affected was 300,000 a 



few short years ago. Now it is 100,000. Two hundred thousand 



people have actually died of the disease in this locality alone. 



CAUSED BY A FATAL FLY. 



At the present time some 20,000 natives of Central Africa are 

 in an advanced stage of sleeping sickness. Hope, which is said to 

 spring eternal in the human breast, has no message for these poor 

 souls. Their doom is sealed. 



Sleeping sickness, as its name indicates, bears a curious resem- 

 blance to sleep. It is caused by the sting of the tsetse fly. The 

 actual bite is not poisonous. The fly acts as a go-between, deposit- 

 ing in one animal a trypanosoma which it has sucked from the blood 

 of another. The trypanosoma, or parasite, carries death. 



After infection, the victim becomes extremely excitable. Then 

 he lapses into lethargy, following exhaustion. The periods of 

 lethargy grow longer and deeper, the interludes of excitability, 

 shorter and more violent. Various glands of the body begin to 

 swell, and at last the patient sinks into a state of coma, or contin- 

 uous sleep. 



No patient, when he reaches that stage, ever awakes. He sleeps 

 on and on — for six months, a year, or even two years. Finally 



