A New Trypanosome Parasitic in Human Beings 1

Abstract

THE terrible mortality caused by sleeping sickness in Africa, and the knowledge that this deadly disease is caused by a species of trypanosome, has directed the attention of the general public, as well as of scientific and medical men all over the world, to these blood-parasites. The frequent occurrence of trypanosomes in the blood of vertebrate animals of all classes has long been known to zoologists, but this fact was regarded as little more than a scientific curiosity until Bruce, scarcely fifteen years ago, showed that a species of trypanosome, since named after him (Trypanosoma brucii), was the cause of the dreaded tsetse-fly disease of domestic animals in Africa, and followed this up by his discoveries, in the present century, with regard to the nature and transmission of sleeping sickness.