TSETSE FLIES 341 



fever, pronounced physical and mental languor 

 and, in later stages, great emaciation and the 

 irresistible desire to sleep from which the malady 

 takes its name. From the outset of discovery of 

 infection there were few, if any, survivals, and to 

 increase the gravity of the matter it was soon 

 found that Europeans were susceptible almost as 

 much as the natives, who were, of course, the 

 chief sufferers. No remedy has as yet, so far as 

 I am aware, been discovered, and the only steps 

 which it has been found possible to take have 

 been those of carefully segregating affected per- 

 sons, and the removal of human habitations back 

 from the shores of lakes and other waterways 

 which the insect disseminator of the sickness 

 selects as his favourite dwelling-place. 



As years went on it became gradually evident 

 that sleeping sickness was spreading southward. 

 Slowly but surely it passed along the western 

 shore of Tanganyika, and thence, to the dismay 

 of the administration and the settlers, it found its 

 way little by little into the hitherto healthy up- 

 lands of North-Eastern Rhodesia, where it has 

 proved, especially during the last three or four 

 years, a hard problem for the local medical staff, 

 as, to make matters more serious, especially from 

 the point of view of attracting the immigrants 

 necessary to the country's development, a number 

 of cases, which afterwards proved fatal, were 

 identified among Europeans already established. 

 This in itself was bad enough, but what added a 

 hundred-fold to the perplexities of the medical 

 officials of the British South Africa Company was 

 23 



