SLEEPING SICKNESS.

Evening Post, Volume LXXII, Issue 149, 21 December 1906, Page 7

SLEEPING SICKNESS.

REPORTED CURES [FBSS3 ABSOCIiTION.] LONDON, 20th December. Professor Koch, the eminent German physician, and two English doctors are curing thousands of patients suffering from sleeping sickness in the Victoria Nyanza district. The cures are being effected by means of a specific known as atoxyl, which exterminates the germs of the disease within six hours. j A correspondent who has some knowledge of the subject writea :— "Sleeping sickness can perhaps hardly be defined as a disease, and yet it must be close akin to it. As far a* the writer knows it has never been known to attack a white man, nor has it bofen seen gouth of tho Zambesi. It seema rather to run in patches, the Victoria Nyanza district being no doubt the worst. Then you can trek north for close on 450 miles, and you will strike it again south of Mataate in the Congo, while it is seen in isolated districts in Nigeria. To all appearances the aWicted person is as well as can be, with simply an overwhelming desire to sleep, and with difficulty a native will bo awakened, and take v, meal occationally, although I have seen them go for six or seven daye without meat or drink. Ac | far as I could discover, when in the country, the average length of the disease from attack to death was five to six years. ' There is no doubt that it is highly ctmtagioue, and Dr. Frank Morris, M.8., expressed the opinion to the writer thttt itf initiation was in the form of bacilli, tvhicU affect and sap one' a whole energy. tho eventual death being partially paused by paralysis of the limbs, membrane, etc. It is a most remarkable eight to come on to a whole village in broad daylight ywith. fifty or sixty per cent pf its inhabitants lying about all asleep;."