14 T. P. ANDERSON STUART. 



the same number of men would have died in the same time. 

 Altogether, and making the necessary allowances, one 

 may readily admit that it is now possible to live and work 

 in comfort and health in a region where the health difficul- 

 ties formerly outweighed the engineering, and this is no 

 less a triumph for sanitary reformers than the canal itself 

 is for engineers. 



Another example of what may be done has been 

 reported early in this year by Koch, who went to Africa 

 to investigate what is known as sleeping sickness, due to 

 an organism in the blood, another minute animal parasite, 

 Trypanosoma gambiense, apparently communicated by 

 a kind of Tsetse fly. The name is from their 

 characteristic awl-like shape, " trupanon " meaning 

 in Greek a boring carpenter's tool, an auger. Koch 

 found that the population of the region where he worked, 

 near the Victoria Nyanza, had been reduced from 30,000 

 to 12,000. In one village only 55 survived out of over 200, 

 and of these 22 persons on examination showed the 

 trypanosome. Continuing his work he sought for a remedy, 

 and reports that a substance called "atoxyl," which is 

 an arsenic compound, meta-arsenic-anilid, C G H 5 NH As0 2 , 

 containing 37*0°/° of arsenic, is as definitely specific for 

 sleeping sickness as quinine is for malaria. This substance 

 was not introduced by Koch, but only used by him. It 

 had been introduced for the treatment of this disease 

 by Thomas and Breinl, of the Liverpool School of 

 Tropical Medicine, in 1905. It is yet too early to 

 say whether or not this statement is somewhat san- 

 guine, but Koch's is a good name, and commands at- 

 tention, whether he is right or wrong — and he has been 

 wrong, as for instance with regard to the human-bovine 

 tuberculosis question, to be presently mentioned. As 

 to the immediate effect of the injection of the drug we 



