An inhabitant of Buruma Island, Uganda, suffering from sleeping sickness. Photograph, 1965, after photograph 1902.

The album, which consists of copy photographs, was sent to Dr Poynter at the Wellcome Institute library by Professor Foster from the Department of Medical Microbiology in Uganda, in 1965. It was put together to record Foster's comments on the photographs

sleeping sickness (trypanosomiasis), an infectious disease which affects the fluid of the spinal cord, causing lethargy and loss of physical function. In Uganda it was passed most virulently by the bite of the tsetse fly

In 1901, a severe sleeping sickness epidemic in Uganda claimed more than 20,000 lives. The first Uganda Sleeping Sickness Commission went out from the London School of Tropical medicine, the senior member was Dr Cuthbert Christy. It also included Dr. Carmichael Low and Count Aldo Castellani.

[Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified], [1965]

1 photograph : photoprint, silver gelatin ; image 12.8 x 18 cm

Uganda. Buruma Island. Towards evening, when the people shown in the first four photographs had left my camp, I discovered that two dead bodies had been left on the ground, and two cases, both of which were in extremis. ... The lettering and original 1902 photograph have been placed together and re-photographed onto the same sheet Lettering continued: "Their friends refused to take any interest in them, and my men had to bury them"

Wellcome Collection 29105i