Watertown leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1909-1911, 1909-05-07
ROOSEVELT MAY SEE
VICTIMS OF SCOURGE.
Sleeping Sickness Commission Hopes He
Will Visit Camps to Witness Work
Accomplished There.

MOMBASA, British East Africa, May
5.-The sleeping sickness commission is
hoping that Theodore Roosevelt will pay
a visit to the expeditions camp at Ses-
Sc, Uganda, where Sir David and Lady
Bruce are in charge of the segregation
hospitals. The governments of Ger
many, France and Belgium as we'll as
the government of the United Kingdom
are Loyalty working together endeavor-
ing to find a cure or preventive for the
| sleeping sickness.
Seven Doctors Succumb.
| Altogether seven European doctors
have succumbed to the fatal disease
since the attempts to cope with the evil
We're commenced. Gov. Sir Hesketh
Bell, in appealing to the millionaires Of
the world and others benevolently dis
posed for money gifts to enable him to
| purchase slaughter stock to crafty the
one and only craving of those whose
suffering is so intense, which is summed
up in the word meat" describes his
! latest visit to the camp in part as fol-
! lows:
The patients were lodged in large
| matched bandas and were divided ac-
| cording to sex and the various stages of
the disease. In one enclosure we saw u
number of infants, in whom the first out
! ward signs of the scourge were just ap-
| pearing. Unaware of their impending
| doom, the little black mites played and
! romped to their hearts content in the
shade of the banana grove, and only the
swelled glands at the base of their
necks showed that their fate was sealed.
Second Stage of Disease
I'm row of sheds, surrounded by the
| banana groves which supply the food
for the patients, we saw numbers of
! those who had reached the second stage
| of the disease. Most of them appeared
to be suffering acutely. They seemed to
shun the cool shade of the broad matched
roofs and preferred to sit or lie in the
| full blaze of the noon days sun Even
there many of them shivered almost con-
stantly. The drawn features and hag-
| gard eyes testified to the gnawing pains
that almost constantly afflicted them,
and the unhappy creatures appeared to
have special dread of being touched.
Many of them were in the peculiar state
of lethargy, which has doubtless been
responsible for the misleading name by
which the disease has become commonly
known. Unfortunately sound sleep rare
ly comes to the relief of the doomed
ones, and the torpor in which they lie
comes from the constant strain of pain.
Many of them in an unguarded moment,
| put an end to their miserable lives, and
it is wonder that more of them do not
do likewise.
Last Stage Is Horrible
Further, in, we came to those who
were in the last stages of the disease.
Lying about, on beds or withered leaves,
! they had reached a degree of emaciation
| that was horrible to see.
1T is generally accepted that a var
iety of the tsetse fly, the Glossina Fal-
pals, is the principal, if not the only
agent for the transmission of the dis
ease. This fly exists in enormous num-
bers on the shores of the Victoria Nv
ANA, and also on the borders of some
other lakes and rivers of Uganda. Its
habitation, however, is restricted to
narrow growth adjoining water, and q
| width of two miles is believed to be the
limit of the infested zones. Out of
some 100000 souls inhabiting the shores
of Victoria Nyanza and the islands in
the great lake, over 5000 have already
been swept out of existence, and it re-
mains to be seen whether the remainder
can still be saved.
The determination of the tsetse an
pears to be a hopeless task, and it has
therefore, been decided to remove all the
| surviving population out of the reach of
the fatal fly.
1T is estimated that over 10000 sick
now. remain to be dealt with, and they
are being located in large camps capable
OF accommodating about 1000 at a
time"