328 DR. \T. YORKE OX 



of a couple of years or so the population, domestic stock, and 

 tsetse fly must again be carefully examined. Then we should be 

 in a position to decide definitely whether or not driving the fauna 

 back from the site of human habitations would pay. Such an 

 experiment as this would take some years to accomplish. That 

 the big game is the reservoir of the human infection there can 

 no longer be any doubt, as the work of Kinghorn and myself 

 has already been confirmed. I submit, therefore, that the time 

 for temporising is past. Sleeping Sickness has already crossed 

 the Zambesi, and eases have been recorded in Southern Rhodesia. 

 In my opinion the natives living in fly areas should be allowed 

 to kill game in their own way, and they might also to an extent 

 be armed with rifles of some uncommon bore, so that a control 

 could be kept over the ammunition. Europeans ought to be 

 allowed to shoot what they like. Protecting the reservoir of the 

 trypanosomes causing fatal disease in man and his flocks and 

 herds by heavy licences, appears to be rather an anomaly. 

 Finally, I consider that some such decisive experiment as I have 

 outlined is urgently required, as even imder the most favourable 

 conditions several years must elapse before we should be in a 

 position to recommend definitely that vigorous steps be taken to 

 drive back the big game from the neighbourhood of human 

 settlements on a large scale throughout Tropical Africa. 



It may seem an act of vandalism to slaughter the wonderful 

 fauna of Africa ; but sui-ely when it is definitely proved that this 

 fauna is antagonistic to civilization, then that which stands in 

 the path of progress must be removed. 



APPENDIX. 



Sir John BLAND-SUTTON, F.R.C.S., F.Z.S., did not feel 

 qualified to express an opinion of value in regard to the drastic 

 scheme for extirj^ating the living reservoirs of Sleeping Sickness 

 proposed by Dr. Yorke. It is not alwaj^s necessary to destroy 

 the reservoirs of a disease in order to protect human beings from 

 infection. For example, when bacteriologists discovered that the 

 goats of Malta, from which the island derives its milk supply, 

 were the reservoirs of the Micrococcus melitensis, the cause of 

 Malta (or Mediterranean) fever, the Governor was strongly urged 

 to order the wholesale destruction of the goats. He explained 

 that such an oi'der would bring about a revolution in the island, 

 for the Maltese are devoted to their goats. The micrococcus is 

 conveyed in the milk ; it was a simpler plaii to banish goat's 

 m.ilk from the military and naval dietary. Sailors and soldiers 

 at Malta are not now allowed to drink goat's milk ; as a con- 

 sequence, Malta fever has disappeared from the Navy and the 

 Army. 



It is probable that the band of bacteriologists and entomolo- 

 gists (of which Dr. Yorke is a brilliant member) engaged in 



