SLEEPING SICKNESS 31 



very far away, it cannot be complained that the 

 Uganda officials have a very bad time. 



One of the most interesting things to be seen in 

 Entebbe at that time was the laboratory of the 

 Royal Commission on Sleeping Sickness, under the 

 charge of Lieutenants Gray and Tulloch,* R.A.M.C., 

 where the disease was being studied with a view to 

 discovering its nature, and, if possible, some means 

 of treatment. Close at hand was the native hospital, 

 filled with miserable wretches in various stages of 

 the disease. It is sad to have to record that, though 

 a great deal has been done towards checking the 

 spread of sleeping sickness, no means of successfully 

 treating it after infection has taken place has yet 

 been discovered ; it is invariably fatal. The destruc- 

 tion that has been caused by this terrible scourge is 

 almost incalculable ; enormous areas of the lake- 

 shore and whole archipelagos, where there was 

 a swarming population only a few years ago, have 

 been rendered absolutely desolate by sleeping sick- 

 ness. I visited a few islands and a strip of shore 

 not far from Entebbe, and walked through large 

 grass-grown villages, where scattered bones were 

 the only signs of humanity to be seen. It has 

 been computed that more than 200,000 people 

 have died of the disease in Uganda alone during 

 the last seven years, and this is probably well 



* Lieutenant Tulloch contracted the disease himself during 

 the course of his experiments, and died shortly after he returned 

 to England, in the summer of 1906 



