THE SLEEPING SICKNESS igi 



of improving and developing in new directions the system 

 of inoculation. Surely if compulsion, or every pressure 

 short of compulsion, is justified in enforcing vaccine in- 

 oculation on every British family, it would be only 

 reasonable and consistent to expend a million or so a 

 year in the perfection and intelligent control of this 

 remedy by the most skilled investigators. Yet not a 

 halfpenny is spent by the British Government in this 

 way. Medicine is organised in this country by its 

 practitioners as a fee-paid profession ; but as a neces- 

 sary and invaluable branch of the public service it is 

 neglected, misunderstood, and rendered to a large extent 

 futile by inadequate funds and consequent lack of capable 

 leaders. The defiant desperate battle which civilised man 

 wages with Nature must go on ; but man's suffering and 

 loss in the struggle the delay in his ultimate triumph 

 depend solely on how much or how little the great civilised 

 communities of the world seek for increased knowledge 

 of nature as the basis of their practical administration 

 and government. 



POSTSCRIPT, December, 1906. Messrs. Thomas and 

 Breinl, of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, 

 two years ago discovered and published the fact that 

 an arsenical aniline product known as " atoxyl " when 

 injected into patients suffering from Sleeping Sickness 

 destroys the parasite and promises to be a cure for 

 this terrible infection. Experiments are in progress 

 in many quarters in regard to this treatment, but cer- 

 tainty can only be arrived at by prolonged observation 

 of the patients. The newspapers have lately, in error, 

 attributed this discovery to Dr. Robert Koch of Berlin, 

 who has merely confirmed the observations of the earlier 

 workers. E. R. L. 



