SLEEPING SICKNESS.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXVIII, Issue 5988, 27 August 1906, Page 5

SLEEPING SICKNESS.

OFFER BY KING LEOPOLD

(Received August 26, 4.24 p.m.) BRUSSELS, Abgust 23. / In the Belgian Government’s estimates for the administration of Congo Free State a vote of £12,000 is provided for prophylactic research.

In addition to ,this King Leopold of Belgium has offered a prize of £BOOO to the discoverer of a remedy for sleeping sickness.

King Leopold has also invited the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine to submit,a scheme for the prevention of the disease.

The strange malady known as "sleeping sickness,'' which is very prevalent and fatal in Central Africa, has been the special study of medical scientists for some years. A couple of yeara ago investigations established that the disease is due to;the presence in the blood of a parasite which j makes its way into the cerebro-spinal fluid of the central nervous system. The agent of infection is a fly, known to entomologists as Glossina palpalis, the distribution of sleeping sickness and this fly coinciding in marked fashion. Early last year Professor E. A. Minchin, a competent .zoologist, was sent to Entebbe, Uganda, to make observations, and his report is awaited with considerable interest. The German "Medical Weekly" stated last February'that Dr Koch had boon commissioned by the German Government to investigate the disease, and it was expected he would make Entebbe his head: quarters. The disease is believed to have been introduced into German East Africa from the west shore of Victoria Nyanza. In the Gorman colonial • estimates for the current year .£6OOO is set down for the purposes of Dr Koch's expedition, which is to extend over about eighteen months.