THE SLEEPING SICKNESS 179 



as a very competent investigator of microscopic organisms 

 we should hesitate to accept them as true. Supposing, 

 as is not improbable, that similar facts can be shown in 

 regard to the trypanosomes of mammalian blood, the con- 

 clusions which our medical investigators have based upon 

 a very limited knowledge of the form and life-history of the 

 trypanosomes occurring in diseases such as sleeping sick- 

 ness, surra, and nagana, are likely to be gravely modified, 

 and practical issues of an unexpected kind will be involved. 

 As has already been pointed out in this article, the 

 British Government has no staff of public servants 

 trained to deal with the world-wide problems of sani- 

 tation and disease which necessarily come with increasing 

 frequency before the puzzled administrators of our 

 scattered Empire. There is no provision for the study 

 of the nature and history of blood-parasites in this 

 country, that is to say, no provision of laboratories with 

 the very ablest and exceptionally-gifted investigators at 

 their head 1 . We play with the provision of an adequate 

 army, officers, and equipment to fight disease, which 

 annually destroys hundreds of thousands of our people, 

 much as barbarous states or bankrupt European king- 

 doms play with the provision of an ordinary army and 

 navy. Their forces exist on paper, or even in fact, but 

 have no ammunition, no officers, and no information ; 

 and there is no pay for the soldiers or sailors. Dr. 

 Schaudinn, on the other hand, carried on his researches 

 as an officer of the German Imperial Health Bureau of 

 Berlin ; and the account of them was published in the 

 official Report of that important department of the German 

 imperial administrative service three years ago. 



1 Since this was written a professorship of Protozoology has with the 

 assistance of the Colonial Office been established in the University of 

 London. This is a first step towards a recognition of the duty of the 

 State in this matter. 



N 2 



