The Zululand mystery (1988)

for [Music] [Music] [Music] during the closing years of the last century the people of zululand were facing disaster their livelihood which depended on their herds of cattle was in Jeopardy the Zulus were helpless in the face of a killer disease which was attacking their livestock a disease they called nagana Villages were littered with the corpses of valuable animals which they had seen reduced to Mere skeletons before their inevitable death and they were convinced that this was due to their cattle eating food contaminated by local game animals meanwhile the Europeans hunting these game animals had their own problem large numbers of their horses were dying poisoned they believed by the deadly bite of the setti fly which infested the game country both Zulu and Hunter faced apparently insoluble problems the governor of zululand s Walter Healey Hutchinson was faced with a National Emergency if his people were to survive the cause of the cattle disease nagana had to be found in 1894 he arranged for a former colleague surgeon captain David Bruce of the Army medical service to begin a scientific investigation into the nature of the problem the whole story is told in s David Bruce's cran lectures delivered before the Royal College of physicians in 195 in this lecture I propose to deal with one of the species of tripones more in detail describing its morphology its pathogenic action on various animals its carrier the tsif fly glossina morans and the reservoir of the virus the Wild game if you'll allow me a short autobiographical digression I should relate the circumstances leading up to the [Applause] [Music] Discovery traveling at that time was no easy matter as the railway into zululand had not been constructed my wife and I left Peter maritzburg on October the 27th 1894 going by mule wagon we arrived Red 7 Days Later in aawe the capital of zululand there an ox wagon was provided and in it we treed to a bombo A magistracy in the north of zulu land and in the center of the affected District this was reached after a month's Journey on November the 24th 1894 figure one represents the small wat and dorb Hut it was provided for living in The Veranda was used at first as the laboratory but afterwards with the aid of the natives a special Hut was built shortly after we arrived some of the affected cattle were brought in by the natives as I had just come from the arm Medical College at netley where I'd been teaching bacteriology for 5 years it was natural that a bacteriological examination of the blood and organs of the infected cattle should first be made this proved [Music] negative about this time 1894 the study of the blood had become popular thanks probably in great measure to ER and it was the fashion to make elaborate examinations of the red and white blood cor pusles to this the discovery of the nagana parasite was probably due it must be remembered that these parasites are as a rule very few and far between in the blood of oxen and also that are our staining methods in those days were rather primitive after some days of this blood examination it began to be remarked that a curiously shaped object different from anything previously found in blood was sometimes seen lying among the blood corpuses at first it was thought to be accidental due to the caral fuks in stain which was being used but but soon it became evident that it might be a blood parasite it was then thought that if it was it might be motile in the living state fresh preparations of blood were made and after a long search a rapidly moving object was seen lashing about among the red blood cor pusles at that time I knew nothing about trypanosomes and at first thought the wriggling object might possibly be a small [Music] Feria there were few or no Illusions to these hemo desur in medical literature that time but when I returned to natal and had an opportunity of Consulting books it soon became evident that the rapidly vibrating body was probably a triposo but there was as yet no proof that the organism seen had any causal connection with the disease they might well be harmless blood parasites they were so scanty in numbers in the blood of The Oxen that it might well be so this led to trying the effect of injecting the blood of nagana cattle into horses and dogs in these animals the disease is much more acute than in cattle and the blood swarms with the parasites in this way it began to be evident that these hzor had a causal connection with the [Music] disease but at that time there was no suspicion that nagana and setly disease were one and the same it was believed by everybody that the zyly killed horses and Cattle by injecting a poison into them moreover these cases of nagana were occurring among native cattle many miles away from the fly belt the work was being done on the top of the lebombo a range of Hills some 2,000 ft in height running North and South about 50 or 60 mil from the coast between the hills and the Sea there was a low-lying coast plane some parts of which were infected with zti flies now I had read in Livingston and other African Travelers and Hunters about the zyly disease and was curious to know what it was like two young oxen and several dogs were therefore sent down into this fly belat and herded among the Fly for a fortnight at the end of this time they were brought back to the hill and it was a great surprise to find the same parasites in their blood as that found in the nagana oxen [Music] in this way the fact gradually unfolded itself that nagana and the Fly disease of the Travelers and Hunters were identical the results of David Bruce's work proved to be of immense importance he went on to show the trypanosome parasites living in the blood of healthy game animals are the source of devastating disease when carried to the blood of domestic Animals by the bite of the tsti fly glina morsitans in 1896 Bruce succeeded in shipping a dog infected with the parasite home to England and as a result of this the trypanosome soon became available for investigation throughout the world in 1899 it was named trosa brucei in his [Music] honor for [Music] [Music] w