A report on sleeping sickness in the Volta river district of the Gold Coast Colony with suggestions for dealing with it / by Arthur E. Horn.

Horn, Arthur E.

Date:: 1910

Credit: A report on sleeping sickness in the Volta river district of the Gold Coast Colony with suggestions for dealing with it / by Arthur E. Horn. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service. The original may be consulted at London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine Library & Archives Service.

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$\wjhich has been gorged with my Idood while I have been itotallj’’ nncoiiscioiis of its presence, and I liave only idiscovered that I had been l)itten l.)y noticing the blood- >stain and finding the injured fly. 'Fhere is little or no ■irritation following a bite from which the fly has fed ffull. It is interesting to note that while the flies were 'very prevalent in August, immediately before the latter iTains, there was a very marked diminution in their inumbers after the latter part of September, so that ]places formerly literally swarming with them were t^vo months afterward very nearly free from them. How far I this is part of a normal periodicity cannot be certainly kknown without longer observation, but it is possilde that ithe usual course of events may have been modified by !the exceptionally heavy “latter rains” of this year, which lasted from the end of August until well into >November, anti by the condition of the Volta which iformed the highest flood known foi‘ sixteen years, and iconsequently overflowed its bank in many places, flood- ling a good deal of the lower lying country. In such a country it would appear that Sleeping 'Sickness would be most likely to be present and flourish, ifoi, on the face of it, everything seems in its favour, as ifar as our present knowledge extends. It is a tbsease well known to the natives, and hough they recognize that Avhen the characteristic 'Symptoms are well develojied it terminates fatally, they certainly do not stand in any great fear of it. lly their own statements it does not produce anv large mortality, md some villages claim that, though they have heard of die disease, they have no personal knowledge of it. No ■stress can however be laid on statements such as this, because they are aware of, and dislike, the steps taken in .iogoland to deal with the disease—-including the$