THE SLEEPING SICKNESS.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1749, 13 September 1905, Page 22

THE SLEEPING SICKNESS.

Colonel David Bruce, who has been inquiringl into the cause, effect, and distribution of "sleeping sickness,” states that in certain parts of Uganda, where the disease has broken out, it has reduced a populous and richly cultivated country to a depopulated wilderness. Sleeping sickness is really a disturbance of the functions of the brain. A patient’s friends might not notice for years that there was anything the matter. But gradually a slight change becomes evident; he is less inclined to work, and begins to lie about more. In the end the first symptoms of the absolutely fatal disease is apparent. The disease, it would seem, was introduced from the Congo, and was caused by the entrance into the blood of a protozoal parasite, and the infection was carried by a tsetse fly. The distribution of the fly corresponds with the distribution of the disease. Where there is no fly there is no sleeping sickness. In other words, we are dealing with a human tsetse fly disease.