that he had found a cure for it in some part of a fresh billy-goat. This good man wanted a special hospital to be built for him and a subsidy so that he might devote himself to the task he had undertaken. His Government, however, although its hospitals are far in advance of those of its neighbours on the Coast, could not see its way to erect such a place."
All I need add to this is that I was informed that the disease when it had once definitely set in ran its fatal course in a year, but that when it came as an epidemic it was more rapidly fatal, sometimes only a matter of a few weeks, and it was this more acute form that was accompanied by wild delirium. Another native informant told me when it was bad it usually lasted only from twenty to forty days.
Monteiro says the sleep disease was unknown south of the Congo until it suddenly attacked the town of Musserra, where he was told by the natives as many as 200 died of it in a few months. This was in 1870, and curious to say it did not spread to the neighbouring towns. Monteiro induced the natives to remove from the old town and the mortality decreased till the disease died out. "There was nothing in the old town to account for this sudden singular epidemic. It was beautifully clean and well-built on high dry ground, surrounded by mandioca plantations, the last place to all appearance to expect such a curious outbreak."[1]
Monteiro also observes that "there is no cure known for it," but he is speaking for Angola, and I think this strengthens his statement that it is a comparatively recent importation there. For certainly there are cures, if not known, at any rate believed in, for the sleeping sickness in its own home Kakongo and Loango. There is a great difference in the
- ↑ Angola and the River Congo. Macmillan. Vol. i., p. 144.
