The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-05-03
vast number of people in the immediate vicinity
The SIeepinu Sickness.

vast number of people in the immediate vicinity.
 The Sleeping Sickness.
 l doubt whether many people in our country have heard of this terrible dis ease. The person infected by it goes to sleep involuntarily and he sleeps most of the time The disease comes on slowly and it may last several years. At first theJ sleep is only occasional. but it in- creases until the man sleeps all the time and finally dies. The natives here are more afraid of it than the smallpox It seems to be sickness of the brain and the doctors say it is largely caused by a little worm or bacillus which is injected into the blood by the tsetse fly. This bacillus multiplies rapidly and soon goes through every part of the system. When it reaches the brain the sleeping symp- toms begin.
 Until recently the sleeping sickness vas confined to the valley of the Congo, out within the past few years it has at tackled the islands and coast of Lake Vic toria, and it is also found in some parts of British East Africa. The disease IS supposed to have been brought here by the porters who carry ivory tusks and rubber on their heads from the Congo to Lake Victoria. They bring their freight to Entebbe and to other ports about the lake in order that it may be sent across the lake on the steamers to Port Florence and by railroad down to Mombasa. It is supposed that some of these native porters were infected when they came here and that the tsetse flies, which are found in great numbers in the swampy regions about the lake, were in- oculated by biting them. You know how the yellow fever is carried by the ste- gC wa mosquito.
 If that mosquito bites a yellow fever pa1.e.i. .ts blood becomes filled with yell low fever germs, and it plants them in any human being it may bite thereafter. It is the same with the tsetse fly. If 1t has bitten a man having sleeping sickness it will carry that sickness to every victim whom it bites in the future. I have seen this fly It looks somewhat like one of the blue-bottle variety which we have in America, and is three times theasize of our ordinary house fly. It has been known about Lake Victoria for ages, but it was not at all dangerous until the sleeping sickness natives came here and inocuat- ed it. This is supposed to have been just four years ago. Shortly after that time the sickness spread all around the lake. The flies on the northern islands became infected and the natives died by the thousands. Lake Victoria is full of is lands which few years ago were thick ly populated and which are now almost deserted The English tried to stop the disease, but they could do nothing, and they had to look on and see the people miserably perish.
 Within the past year they have had Dr. Koch, the celebrated German diph- theria specialist here studying the dis case. He had large hospital on the Sesse Island and has had hundreds of patients, but, as I understand it, so far no radical cure has been found. At one time Dr. Koch thought he had discovered a remedy. It was to fill the patient with arsenic. This enumerated the disease, but the trouble was that the arsenic us- ually killed the patient. It is said that certain antidotes for the arsenic have now been found, and it may be that by means of them the patients can be kept alive until they can get rid of the arsenic taken into their system to kill the bacilli.
 It Bites the Hippopotam.
 A very serious matter with regard 10