350

Notes, Short Comments, and Answersto Correspondents.

SLEEPING SICKNESS IN UGANDA.

THE report for 1907-08 of Sir Henry Hesketh Bell, K.C.M.G., Governorof the Uganda Protectorate, has been presented to Parliament through the Colonial Office. In his introductory statement Sir Hesketh Bellexpresses his thankfulness at being able to report that the measureswhich have been taken during the past three years to stamp outsleeping sickness are proving effectual. During 1907 the deaths fromthe disease in the kingdom of Buganda numbered less than 4000.During 1908 the mortality fell to about ]700, and it is believed that for

. the whole Protectorate the deaths during the past 12 months havenot exceeded 2500. No Europeans are known to have become infectedsince 1906. Practically the whole of the population of the fly-infested shores of Lake Victoria has been removed to districtsinland where the tsetse fly does not exist, and it is believedthat there can now be but few cases of fresh infection so far asthe mainland is concerned. Steps are in progress for the com-

plete depopulation of the islands in the lake. It was feared thatthis would prove a most difficult matter, but the native governmentis now showing such confidence in the efficacy of the measures

adopted by the executive for the suppression of sleeping sicknessthat the request for final action has come from it. 21,000 persons willhave to be moved and arrangements are being made to locate themin Chagwe and in other districts of the mainland. The realisation ofthis project will put the finishing touch to the whole scheme. The

pestilent tsetse fly will still infest the shores of the great lake, butit will find no more victims on which to play its malevolent part.Sleeping sickness has ceased to be the dominant scourge of the

territory, and the disease has now been reduced to a merely sporadicscale. Continued vigilance, however, is essential, and the re-

crudescence of sleeping sickness can only be averted by theconsistent maintenance of preventive measures.

"SPEAKING OF FLIES! "

WE have had previous occasion to call attention to the common-sensemethods of educating the people in health matters adopted by theDepartment of Health of the City of Chicago, notably in connexionwith an excellent little leaflet bulletin issued fortnightly for publicinstruction. We have now received from the same bureau a small but

striking poster which is headed Speaking of Flies!" and whichproceeds to speak of them in terms of the ungarnished truth. Andlest the verbal recital of Musca’s potentialities for evil should notseize the general imagination a pictorial border (designed, we read,by the Florida State Board of Health) is introduced showing plaguesof flies pursuing their abominable courses. In the left-hand columnof this border are shown a consumptive’s spittoon, a garbage-can, amuck-heap, a dead dog, and a privy midden, each with its attendantswarm of house-flies. These, grown to disgusting dimensions, areshown flitting across the upper and lower borders of the sheetand alighting upon the various articles of food depicted in its

right-hand margin, which includes a worried couple dining amidsta cloud of the domestic pests and a fly-ridden sick man in a

bed labelled "typhoid." As a counterfoil to these " horrible revela-tions " there is printed some practical advice on " What to do to getrid of flies," which consists largely of procedures often advocated inthese columns, the screening of food and windows, the use of fly-traps, or of formaldehyde, or of bichromate of potash solution. The

burning of pyrethrum powder is also recommended, and instructionsare given for the elimination of the breeding places of flies. Americanshave the reputation at least of being a thoroughly "practical"nation, and we can hardly suppose that they will read this poster andaltogether ignore its warnings. We hope the poster will come to thenotice of public health officers in this country.

NITROGEN FROM THE AIR.

THE recent Congress of Chemistry had no more interesting subjectunder consideration than the practical and profitable extraction ofnitrogen from the atmosphere and the fixation thereof in the formof nitrate of Iiine and that Norway, which a distinguished writeronce described as "a howling wilderness," should be the localitywhere the new industry is to have its headquarters will add interestto what the public will regard as a wonderful achievement.Nitrates, however obtained, are no new thing. Oliver Cromwelllaid an embargo on cowsheds and pigsties, which would go to provethat the great Protector was not altogether ignorant of practicalchemistry; also that among his military saints and statesmen hedid not include any very energetic President of the Local GovernmentBoard; while further back still "the greatest, wisest, meanest of man-kind," Lord Bacon, considered a small dose of saltpetre taken daily hadthe sovereign virtue of prolonging life, which he might have possiblyproved in his own case had he not the misfortune to die from a coldcaused by conducting his philosophical experiments in severe weather. To come down to more modern times, the officinas of Chili and Peru have poured abundant supplies of nitrates in the form of nitrate of ( (soda, which, we think, is the more useful of the two salts, into the

i.