CO885-(18-19) — Page 576

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE

61

Reference

C.O.885

PUBLIC RECORD OFFICE, LONDON

ALLY WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE BE REPRODUCED PHOTOGRAPHIC- COPYRIGHT PHOTOGRAPH-NOT TO

}

54

many police. Native police alone could not be trusted, and unless they were under the very close control of white men, inefficiency, abuse, and blackmail would be the probable results. The whole of the movement in transport and recruited labour can be stopped and the natives generally are not altogether disobedient, but the cunning watchfulness of those who intend to cross would not be counteracted by any possible system of patrol, nor by the destruction of canoes which are unneces- sary for crossing. Punishment of such natives on their return after many months will be of little avail if the object of our regulations has been defeated, and I am doubtful of the effect of condemning to idleness and preventing, perhaps for two or three years, all chance of work for the natives who have for some time been persuaded, and have willingly learnt, to seek for it. The native does not live only on what his gardens produce, and the movement in search of work has taken the place of the old wide movement for barter, which, if it should again become common, would be difficult to control.

I am of opinion that it would be safer to allow natives from the guard area to go, under proper control and medical supervision, along a known route to work at Kambove, but this control could only (as in the case of labour going to Southern Rhodesia) be effective if the Tanganyika Concessions Company, who alone employ our natives, would agree to receive no native from North-Eastern Rhodesia unless As such natives properly recruited, medically examined, and provided with a pass. would only receive their reserve pay on their return to North-Eastern Rhodesia they would have to again pass along the prescribed route and be subject to medical examination. More natives would be employed, but there would be less chance of infection.

It will be seen that the measures adopted are based principally on the control of the movements of natives, and that this control will have to be maintained until it is known where further infection is possible, or what species of flies, under natural conditions, carry the disease. If only palpalis carries it, control will still be needed, but the prohibition of movement will be very much less, and will be If morsitans, under natural con- confined to the protection of very small areas. ditions, carries it, the fly in many places is now in contact with the disease and is so widespread that nothing short of the depopulation of large areas will prevent the slight movement which would, perhaps slowly, carry on the infection, not only through North-Eastern Rhodesia, but generally southward and eastward by a multitude of routes, and I agree with Dr. Spillane that, short of such measures of depopulation, morsitans cannot, in framing regulations, be considered as a factor in the spread of the disease.

Mr. Neave has arrived here from the Katanga country where he has been engaged on the Sleeping Sickness Commission and is now going to study the dis- tribution of tsetse, searching especially for palpalis on the Luangwa and Chambezi rivers. Ile is to carry on this work under the terms given in your letter to him of 22nd October, 1906.

As soon as the sleeping sickness rules are published I will send copies to Sir William Milton and to Mr. Codrington, and I have no doubt that, with their co- operation, the independent migration of natives southwards can be stopped, and the amount of regularly recruited labour can be considerably increased.

Though I should prefer to make arrangements so that natives from the guard area could be employed at Kambove, I do not propose to attempt to do so unless it be found that the numbers surreptitiously moving there make the movement a danger. I enclose a copy of a letter from Dr. Spillane, written to me in answer to some of Dr. Kinghorn's statements.

The Secretary,

The British South Africa Company, London.

His Honour

ADMINISTRATOR OF NORTH EASTERN RHODESIA,

Fort Jameson,

I am, &c.,

L. A. WALLACE,

Administrator.

Fort Jameson, 25 January, 1908. IIAVING read a copy of a letter from Dr. Allan Kinghorn, dated Madona, December 18th, 1907, on the subject of sleeping sickness on the Luapula, in which he criticises the action which is being taken there by the Administration of North- Eastern Rhodesia, I feel bound, as one largely responsible for such action, to

55

make a few remarks on the subject of Dr. Kinghorn's letter, not from any con- troversial standpoint, but with the sole object of removing any doubts which his observations might give rise to, as to the methods adopted by this Administration in dealing with the problem of this disease.

:

It is on the I am in entire agreement with Dr. Kinghorn on the main issues of his obser- vations. Theoretically they are correct and logically partly correct. interpretation of scientific principles and their practical application to Adminis- trative measures that I venture to offer my remarks, which are based on a wider knowledge of the country than Dr. Kinghorn can reasonably claim to possess.

2. The reference made by Dr. Kinghorn to an "infected strip," some 10 miles in width, along the Luapula is unknown to us as such, and such an area has yet to be proved to be infected. This arca is referred to in my report for descriptive purposes as a "sleeping sickness area," i.e., an area through which sleeping sickness is likely to spread, and within it a "focus of infection" is described on the Mansa River, but this does not justify a reference by Dr. Kinghorn to the whole area as an "infected strip," and, therefore, the statement that "natives (going to Kambove) will be moving from uninfected to infected country or vice versa" is not an accurate one.

3. Dr. Kinghorn will find on further investigating the Luapula, north of Johnston Falls, that the fly there is not a direct extension of that found on Lake Mweru, and that the infection on the Luapula is due not to a direct extension of the endemic areas of the Congo into North-Eastern Rhodesia, but to the advent of a few imported cases on the Luapula from the Congo. It is because all the factors necessary for an extension of the disease are present on this part of the Luapula that such an area has been defined and called a "sleeping sickness arca,' not implying by that term that the whole area is necessarily infected, but to describe an area in which every precaution must be taken against the introduction of fresh infection.

23

4. I have already dealt with the possibility of G. morsitans being a natural carrier of trypanosomiasis. The bulk of the evidence which can be brought to bear upon this question is against this assumption, as the following facts seem to show:-

(a) The distribution of human trypanosomiasis follows the distribution of G. palpalis; no such correspondence can be traced between the disease and the distribution of G. morsitans.

(b) Belts of G. morsitans in contact with cases of trypanosomiasis have failed

to disseminate the disease throughout the belt.

(c) Cases of disease found close to thick belts of G. morsitans and not asso- ciated with G. palpalis are invariably insolated cases, -as the absence of glandular enlargement in such districts tends to show.

(d) Natives suffering from trypanosomiasis have travelled through belts of G. morsitans without any evidence of the disease having been trans- mitted to others living within the belt.

I do not assume for one moment that it is not a factor at all, but the position

I take with regard to

Is this: that with so little evidence in support of its being

a natural carrier of trypanosomiasis, it is too formidable an agent to be taken into consideration in the framing of regulations for the prevention of the spread of sleeping sickness.

33

5. I must take exception to the following statement in Dr. Kinghorn's letter, "Yet it is proposed to allow the Tanganyika Concessions, Limited, to move some six thousand odd loads with carriers from North-Eastern Rhodesia through country abounding in tsetse flies to a district from which the cases now present in the The district The district is Kambove. No case ever came from Kambove, country have come." nor can it be proved that a case was ever contracted at Kamlove. Dr. Kinghorn refers to is the endemic area in the Congo which is as distinct from Kambove as North-Eastern Rhodesia is from Fort Jameson. Any native who has been working in the Congo for Tanganyika Concessions, Limited, on being asked where he has been will say " Kambove," and Dr. Kinghorn has been misled by this; on careful cross-questioning it will be found that such cases have been long in contact with the disease in the endemic area 100 or perhaps 200 miles from Kam- Love. I quote a passage here from a letter addressed to me on this subject by