The Fight Against Sleeping Sickness ¹

Abstract

THE report of the German Sleeping Sickness Commission is an attractive work in which even those who are not specially concerned with the problems of sleeping sickness may find much to interest them. In addition to a great mass of detail bearing on the etiology, diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of a disease which is at present the most important economic problem of European administrations in Africa, the work contains many facts and observations of interest to the naturalist and the anthropologist, and is illustrated by numerous exquisite photographs. A certain number of the illustrations have, as might be expected in a work of this kind, a melancholy interest, representing the ravages of the disease as shown by sufferers from it, or even more significantly by deserted homesteads; but others give a vivid idea of the scenery of the shores of the Victoria Nyanza and of the dwellings, habits, and appearance of the natives of that region.