i6o THE KINGDOM OF MAN 



of negroes already infected with the disease ; and a 

 curious theory obtained some favour, according to which 

 the sleeping sickness of the West Indian slaves was a 

 kind of nostalgia, and, in fact, the manifestation of what 

 is sometimes called " a broken heart." 



The signs that a patient has contracted the disease 

 are very obvious. They are recognised by the black 

 people, and the certainly fatal issue accepted with 

 calm acquiescence. The usually intelligent expression 

 of the healthy negro is replaced by a dull apathetic 

 appearance ; and there is a varying amount of fever 

 and headache. This may last for some weeks but is 

 followed more or less rapidly by a difficulty in locomo- 

 tion and speech, a trembling of the tongue and hands. 

 There is increased fever and constant drowsiness, from 

 which the patient is roused only to take food. At 

 last usually after some three or four months of illness 

 complete somnolence sets in ; no food is taken ; the 

 body becomes emaciated and ulcerated ; and the victim 

 dies in a state of coma. The course of the disease, from 

 the time when the apathetic stage is first noticed, may 

 last from two to twelve months. 



It is this terrible disease which has lately appeared on 

 the shores of the Victoria Nyanza, in the kingdom of 

 Uganda, administered by the British Government. Until 

 the early part of the year 1901 there was not the slightest 

 suspicion that sleeping sickness occurred in any part of 

 the Uganda Protectorate ; nor was it known in East 

 Africa at all, any more than in the north and south of 

 that great continent. It seems gradually to have crept 

 up the newly opened trade-routes of the Congo basin, and 

 thence to have spread into the west of Uganda, the ter- 

 ritory known as Busoga. Numbers of Soudanese and 

 Congo men are known to have settled in this region after 



