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velop in any tropical morass that may chance to be at hand.

A PORTION OF THE LABORATORY SCREENED OFF BY MOSQUITO NETTING.

In the foreground is shown a box for hatching out tsetse flies for experimental purposes.

STUDYING THE TSETSE FLY AND THE PARASITIC TRYP-
ANOSOMES UNDER THE MICROSCOPE IN THE LABOR
ATORY OF THE AFRICAN COMMISSION.
The head official of this Commission, Sir David Bruce, is
seated at the left.

Here and there in western Uganda far enough away from the death carrier's haunts to be free from the fly's visits are charnel houses whose dark walls shut off from view the tragic scenes produced by this curse to human beings. They are the detention camps where the "suspects" are herded after being brought in droves, sometimes at the bayonet's point, where they may be obstinate, to be placed where they cannot infect others. Before being placed in these thatched sheds, the surgeon's needle pierces each and fills the test tube with blood on which the lens of the microscope must pass judgment. If even a single parasite is detected the negro is condemned to confinement for life. He can go outside if able, walk or sit as he wishes. But there is a dead line where are posted black men in khaki and puttees, Uganda native guards, drilled to handle the rifle. If one of these prisoners for disease in his frenzy attempts to pass between those living statues he is seized and forced back. If he should get outside, the blacks obey their orders, but this death is a mercy if the victim had the intelligence to know it. Thus the spread of the disease has been checked, at least in Uganda,-though, nevertheless, thousands of lives have been lost,by separating the infected from the healthful. All the blacks have been taken

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FATAL PLAGUE THREATENS WHOLE WORLD

33

away from the swamp huts where the winged death might reach them and shelter given them on high and dry ground where the fly is unknown.

The captives in the detention camp, the monkey huts, the rat cages, the dog houses, provide means of studying sleeping sickness by which many of the facts known of its curse to human beings and animals have been revealed. Risking their lives the members of the fly expeditions search swamp and water shore where the rank tropical vegetation shelters their. prey. Provided with long handled nets, as a tsetse fly takes wing, the net is dropped over it and given a twist. If wanted dead, it is picked out with the gloved fingers and the head put into a bottle of poison, the fly put into a covered tin box for laboratory work. But the alert negro is quick enough to catch them alive in the bush, sometimes without a net, using one finger and the thumb to grasp the wings. These fly boys are at each detention camp and also wear the khaki and puttees, but go after the winged death carrier with faces and hands bare, laughing and jumping as if having a frolic. They know the habits of the fly as the American boy knows the bee, but ignorant of what a bite may mean. Several have been bitten but merely because they had become careless.

In this way collections of biting flies are procured from all parts of Uganda. As each package comes in, it is examined for tsetse flies. If the parcel contains man killers, a red disk is stuck on a large map over the locality from which the flies have been sent. If, on the other hand, no tsetse flies were found, a blue disc is fixed over the spot. In the same way and at the same time a second map is prepared, to show the distribution of sleeping sickness. If a note accompanying the collection of flies states that sleeping sickness is prevalent, then a red disc is placed over the locality, and if, on the contrary, no cases of sleeping sickness are reported, a blue disc is affixed. Thus the two maps so prepared show at a glance whether the distribution of sleeping sickness and that of the tsetse correspond or not, and the map warns against the infected regions.

The tsetse, dead or alive, is made an agent to aid in finding a cure for the

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wretches in the detention camp have been subjects for experiment. This on the face of it would appear to be a horrible cruelty, but it is necessary for the benefit of humanity. Tsetse flies, free from trypanosomes, are placed upon victims in various stages to determine if they can absorb the parasites. After they have sucked human blood they are put in the cages and huts where the captive animals are confined. In nearly every instance the trypano

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NATIVE UGANDIANS OUT SEARCHING FOR TSETSE FLIES TO TAKE BACK TO THE AFRICAN COMMISSION OF SCIENTISTS.

on a monkey to bite him. Once is enough. Blood tests soon show the wriggler in the blood of the animal. He can be counted as dead. Before

dying, other flies are put into the monkey box to suck his blood, then taken to the dog house or the rat cage to discover if they are infected. The animal victims may show no outward signs, but again the blood tests reveal the deadly truth that the tsetse can carry its invisible death-dealing parasite from an infected animal as its source.

The rat may easily be a source of the disease. While a British surgeon's orderly was cutting open a rat that had been bitten, the point of his knife slipped, merely scratching the skin of his wrist. The others rushed to his aid. A comrade put his mouth to the spot and sucked out what blood he could, spitting it out instantly and washing his mouth with an antiseptic. The surgeons cut the tiny artery under the knife scratch and tied it in two parts to check the movement of the trypanosomes, then cauterized the wound. In a week the lens revealed them in the blood test. In six months the man was a corpse.

Only by such near-death work is it possible to form any conclusion as to the origin of sleeping sickness or nagana as it is called when the horse or cow or antelope is attacked by the tsetse, and horrible as it may seem the poor

SEARCHING FOR LARVAE ON A SANDY BEACH.

some is found to have performed its mission of death.

Sir David Bruce, who has made a life monument to himself for his fight against this destroyer, utters these words: "Can we by any means kill the trypanosomes in the body of man, or render man immune to the attack of this parasite? Can a drug be discovered which will cure man of this disease? Many attempts have been made, and are being made, to discover such a drug. As long ago as the days of Livingstone, arsenic was vaunted as a cure of the 'fly disease,' and up to the present time this drug has held its own as probably the most useful one we have in this malady. At first it was used in the form of arsenious acid, dissolved in an alkaline solution, but later other preparations, such as atoxyl and orpiment, have been experimented with. These experiments have in many cases, been made on the lower animals, and some have doubtless been followed by a complete cure. But

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ONE WAY IN WHICH SLEEPING SICKNESS IS SPREAD.

The tsetse frequently bites these carriers-unknown to the victims-while the latter are on the march from one town to another.

always return to the blood and the man dies.

"All attempts to render man immune to the trypanosomes by some antitoxic serum or vaccine have up to the present been fruitless, and there does not seem to be any likelihood of anything being found out in that direction for a long time to come."

The program of work being carried on by the medical commission is so extensive as to make it impossible to mention every item. Special endeavors are being made

According to Todd's theory the answer to this will be found in the enlarged glands.

Another point to be brought out is how far the mental diseases found among natives are cases of sleeping sickness. Koch's hypothesis that sleeping sickness can be transmitted also by contact, etc., is to be examined most attentively.

Atoxyl treatment as applied by Koch (partly alternating with mercury and antimony treatment) is being continued and studied most carefully.

THE BLUE SKY LAW

By

HARRY F. KOHR

F the men who have been making a living, and something more, by swindling ignorant investors out of millions of dollars have noticed a considerable falling off in business this year they can blame it all on "Joe" Dolley of Kansas. Dolley, perhaps, is not so widely known as Coburn of Kansas and never may overshadow the Premier Press Agent of the Peerless Prairies of the Sunflower State, but he is rapidly attaining a fame that, even if it doesn't dim the effulgence of the Coburn prosperity smile, at least, will not be dimmed by that same effulgence.

Coburn's duty is to tell the populace of Kansas how to keep on making more money. Dolley's duty is to tell them how to keep what they have and keep on keeping it. Coburn is the Eternal Boost personified and Dolley is the Anvil Chorus. Not that Dolley doesn't do a whole lot of boostingfor every time the banks of Kansas show a greater amount of deposits than ever before he lets out a whoop that's heard from Portland, Me., to Portland, Ore., -but his main job is to knock anything that is likely to separate the Kansan from his money

without said Kansan getting therefor full and complete value in hand, to say nothing, of at least six per cent dividends thereon thereafter.

If you do not already know it, it will be written here that you may read, that Joseph N. Dolley is the state bank commissioner of Kansas, and the first man who ever held the job that anybody outside the state ever heard of, becoming thus widely known because he considered he had other duties than those specifically set down upon the statute books. held to the view that, if the law didn't say so in so many words, it meant that he was not only expected to protect the people against dishonest or insecure. depositories for their money but also to

He

protect them from those dishonest men who sought to induce them to invest their savings in unsound and insecure schemes of any character.

There are some 825 state banks in Kansas, which hold on an average of $125,000,000 in deposits, nearly $100 for every man, woman and child in the state. Many of these millions are saving accounts. There used to be rich picking for the stock swindlers in that $125,000,000, but

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WHERE THE INHABITANTS OF THE STATE OF KANSAS ARE PROTECTED AGAINST

STOCK SWINDLERS.

The state capitol at Topeka.

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