HUNTING AND HUNTED IN BELGIAN CONGO 



causes ' sleeping sickm SS Then again he says : 



" Emin Pasha's Sudanese, when they settled down in 

 the Lendu country to the west of Lake Albert, seem to 

 have become infected with the disease. A portion of 

 these troops was moved somewhat rapidly into BuSOga, 

 the district of the Uganda Protectorate which is on the 

 opposite bank of the Victoria Nile to the kingdom of 

 Uganda. After the Sudanese troops of Lugard's recruit- 

 ing had thoroughly settled down in Busoga, sleepi 

 sickness began very slowly to develop. Possibly its 

 spread was checked by the convulsions and displacement 

 of population occurring during the Uganda mutiny. . . . 

 The matter is really In coming very urgent for those who 

 take an interest in the commercial development of 

 Africa, as the spread of the disease is attaining such pro- 

 portions as may almost end in the depopulation of the 

 Congo basin and of the Uganda Protectorate. While the 

 extension of the malady into British Central Africa and 

 the Egyptian Sudan is also a matter of concern. The 

 area of sleeping sickness seems certainly to be limited 

 by the range of one or more species of tsetse fly that do 

 not care about parts of Africa without heavy rainfall 

 and abundant vegetation, and it may be that where these 

 forms of tsetse cannot live no other agency may be present 

 to transmit the trypanosomes from the blood of infected 

 human beings to the veins of other people not yet 

 inoculated. Sleeping sickness is ' a human tsetse fly ' 

 disease How it started is a mystery as much unsolved 

 as the original inception of most other diseases. It is 

 due to a trypanosome possibly trypemosim* gcmbUust 

 — passing from the blood of an infected human being 

 into the cerebro-spinal fluid. From the moment these 

 micro-organisms enter the spinal marrow, and thence 

 the brain, death is almost certain after a more or less 

 lengthy period of increasing somnolence." Then again 

 he says: "... it seems to have reached Lake Alberl 



x 4- 



