Sleeping sickness in the light of recent knowledge / by Louis W. Sambon.

  • Sambon, Louis Westenra, 1865-1931.
Date:
1903
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Sleeping sickness in the light of recent knowledge / by Louis W. Sambon. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    Recent Knowledge. By LOUIS W. SAMBON, M.D. (Naples). Lecturer to the London School of Tropical Medici7ie. For over a century the mysterious sleeping sickness of Africa has been known to Europeans. It lurked in the back-country of the West Coast, between the Senegal and the Quanza, and, at the time of the slave trade, hundreds of negroes, raided from the interior, died of it on board transport ships, or in the plantations of the Antilles. But the disease did not give rise to any apprehension ; it was believed to be strictly confined to the negro race, it did not spread in the places to which it was imported, and was universally regarded as a peculiar form of nostalgia. Quite recently, possibly in consequence of the great commercial stir which the advent of the white man has created amongst the native tribes of Tropical Africa, sleep- ing sickness has begun to spread very widely, and has assumed a fearful importance in the pathology of the Dark Continent. Within the last few years it has extended southward throughout Angola, it has spread up the Niger and the Congo, and, proceeding along the new trade routes opened up by Europeans, it has suddenly appeared in East Central Africa, invading the Upper Nile and the shores and islands of the equatorial lakes. In Northern Angola, on the upper Congo, in certain districts of Uganda, its ravages have already been appalling. In many places entire villages have been depopulated. In the Busoga province alone 30,000 natives have succumbed within the last three years.