My African Journey

by Winston Churchill

On April 28th, 1903, Colonel Bruce, whose services had been obtained for the investigation of "sleeping sickness" through the instrumentality of the Royal Society, announced that he considered the disease to be due to a kind of trypanosome, conveyed from one person to another by the bite of a species of tsetse-fly called Glossina palpalis. His theory was strongly supported by the fact that the disease appeared to be confined to the localities infested by the fly. The fly-belt also could be defined with precision, and was rarely found to extend more than a mile or two from water. The news that Europeans could no longer consider themselves immune from the infection caused, as might be imagined, much consternation in the white community. Nearly everybody had been bitten by tsetses at one time or another, but whether by this particular species when actually infected, remained in suspense. Moreover, tsetse-flies abounded in such numbers on all parts of the lake shore that their wholesale destruction seemed quite impossible. What then?

For a time Colonel Bruce's discovery almost paralyzed all preventive and restrictive measures. The scourge fell unchecked. By the end of 1903 the reported deaths numbered over ninety thousand, and the lake shores were becoming fast depopulated. Whole villages were completely exterminated, and great tracts in Usoga, which had formerly been famed for their high state of cultivation, relapsed into forests. The weakness of the victims and the terror or apathy of the survivors permitted a sudden increase in the number of leopards, and these fierce animals preyed with daring and impunity upon the living, the dying, and the dead.

Further investigations, which were anxiously pushed on in many directions, revealed the existence of the tsetse-fly over widespread areas. In the interior of Usoga, on the banks of many rivers, in swamps on the shores of the Albert Lake and Lake Albert Edward, these swarming emissaries of death were found to be awaiting their message. All that was needed to arm them with their fatal power was the arrival of some person infected with the microbe. The Albert shores and several parts of the Upper Nile soon became new centres of pestilence. Thousands of deaths occurred in Unyoro. By the end of 1905 considerably more than two hundred thousand persons had perished in the plague-stricken regions, out of a population in those regions which could not have exceeded three hundred thousand.

Any decrease in the mortality in any district up to the present time is due, not to any diminution in the virulence of the disease, but simply to the reduction of possible victims, owing to the extermination of the inhabitants. Buvuma, a few years ago one of the most prosperous of all the islands, contains fewer than fourteen thousand out of thirty thousand. Some of the islands in the Sesse group have lost every soul, while in others a few moribund natives, crawling about in the last stages of the disease, are all that are left to represent a once teeming population.

"It might have been expected," writes Sir H. Hesketh Bell, the Governor of Uganda, to whom I am indebted for much valuable information on this subject, "that, even though the negroes showed inability to grasp the theory of the transmission of disease by the agency of insects, the undeniable deadliness of the countries bordering on the lake shore would have induced them to flee from the stricken land and to have sought in the healthier districts inland a refuge from the pestilence that was slaying them by thousands. An extraordinary fatalism, however, seems to have paralyzed the natives, and, while deploring the sadness of their fate, they appear to have accepted death almost with apathy."

The police of science, although arrived late on the scene of the tragedy, were now following many converging clues. Therapeutic investigation into the treatment and origin of the disease, entomological examination of the resorts, habits, dangers, and life-history of the fly, and thirdly administrative measures of drastic authority are now being driven sternly forward. Knowledge has accumulated. Fighting the sleeping sickness is like laying a vampire. To make the spell work, five separate conditions must be present—water, bushes, trees, the tsetse-fly (Glossina palpalis), and one infected person. Remove any one of these and the curse is lifted. But let them all be conjoined, and the sure destruction of every human being in the district is only a matter of time.

The Government of Uganda is now pursuing a policy based on the appreciation of these facts. Wherever it is necessary to come to the lake shores, as at Entebbe, Munyonyo, Ripon Falls, Fajao, etc., the tsetse-fly is banished or eliminated by cutting down the trees, clearing away the bush, and planting in its place the vigorous, rapid-growing citronella grass, which, once firmly established, holds its own against invading vegetation. Wherever it is not possible to clear the shores of tsetse-flies, they must be cleared of inhabitants. And the extraordinary operation of moving entire populations from their old homes to new places—often against their will—has been actually accomplished within the last year by a combined dead-lift effort of these three tremendous forces of Government which regulate from such different points of view the lives and liberties of the Baganda.

It does not follow that the lake shores will have to be abandoned for ever. In a very short time—some say two days, some eleven hours—the infected tsetse is free from poison and can no longer communicate it; and once the disease has been eradicated from the population, healthy people might return and be bitten with impunity. Nor, on the other hand, can we hope, unless some cure capable of being applied on a large scale can be perfected, that the mortality in the immediate future will sensibly diminish. For there are many thousands of persons still affected, and for these segregation, nursing, and compassion comprise the present resources of civilization.

One thing is, however, above all things important. There must be no losing heart. At any moment the researches which are being conducted in so many laboratories, and in which Professor Koch has taken a leading part, may produce an absolute therapeutic remedy. By the administrative measures now vigorously enforced it is believed that the fatal contact between infected persons and uninfected flies, between infected flies and uninfected persons, will have been effectively broken. We cannot fail to learn more of the tsetse. The humble black horse-fly, indistinguishable to the casual observer from harmless types, except that his wings are folded neatly like a pair of shut scissors, instead of splaying out on either side of his back, is now under a bright, searching, and pitiless eye. Who are his enemies? What are his dangers? What conditions are essential to his existence? What conditions are fatal or inimical? International Commissions discuss him round green tables, grave men peer patiently at him through microscopes, active officers scour Central Africa to plot him out on charts. A fine-spun net is being woven remorselessly around him. And may not man find allies in this strange implacable warfare? There are fishes which destroy mosquitoes, there are birds which prey upon flies, there are plants whose scent or presence is abhorrent or injurious to particular forms of insect life. In what places and for how long will the tsetse continue to fly, as he is wont, over the smooth, gleaming water, just above the reeds and bushes, just below the branches of the overhanging trees? Glossina palpalis contra mundum!