i6 2 THE KINGDOM OF MAN 



experiments on that subject and report to the committee 

 in London. The sleeping sickness enquiry was under- 

 taken by the same committee ; but unfortunately very 

 insufficient funds were placed at its disposal. When the 

 South African cattle-owners found their herds threatened 

 six years ago by a new form of mortal disease ' the 

 East Coast fever ' the South African Government ac- 

 cepted the offer of Dr. Robert Koch, of Berlin, to under- 

 take the investigation of the disease and the discovery, if 

 possible, of a remedy, for the sum of 10,000. No such 

 sum was at the disposal of the committee of the Royal 

 Society. They were obliged to send out young and 

 enterprising medical men, practically without pay or 

 reward, to see what they could do in the way of deter- 

 mining the cause of, and, if possible, the remedy for, 

 the terrible sleeping sickness raging in Uganda and 

 destroying daily hundreds of British subjects. The com- 

 mittee set to work in the summer of 1902, and sent 

 out Drs. Low, Christy, and Castellani to Entebbe, the 

 capital of Uganda. 



The guesses as to the cause and nature of sleeping 

 sickness at the time when this commission set forth were 

 very various. Some highly capable medical authorities 

 held that it was due to poisonous food. The root of the 

 manioc, on which the natives feed, was supposed to be- 

 come infected by some poison-producing ferment. A more 

 generally received opinion was that it was caused by 

 a specific bacterium which invades the tissues of the 

 brain and spinal cord. Several totally different micro- 

 organisms of this sort had been described with equal 

 confidence by French and Portuguese investigators as the 

 cause of the sleeping sickness studied by them in West 

 Africa or on the Congo. Sir Patrick Manson, the head 

 of the British Colonial medical service, an authority of 



