Abstract
THE sleeping sickness is, and unfortunately continues to be, the most burning problem of European colonisation in equatorial Africa. Like any other medical problem, that of sleeping sickness has two sides, which may be distinguished broadly as prevention and cure. Investigators in all parts of the world have been experimenting actively with the object of finding a drug, or method of treatment, which shall act in sleeping sickness as quinine does in malaria; that is to say, which shall destroy the parasites in the blood, without seriously affecting the health of the patient. Up to the present, the atoxyl treatment has given the best results, but it has often failed to produce more than temporary amelioration, and it is open to doubt if it has produced a complete cure in any case, while, like other arsenical compounds, it may have serious toxic effects. On Thursday last, however, a communication was made to the Royal Society by Drs. H. G. Plimmer and J. D. Thomson, of the Lister Institute, on the effect of certain antimony salts; and, to judge from the preliminary experiments on rats, these compounds appear to be far more efficient in their curative action, and at the same time less toxic in their effects, than atoxyl. The experiments will be extended at once to larger animals and to man, and though it would be premature to say that the long-sought-for cure has been found, the outlook is certainly more full of hope than it has ever been before.
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The Cure and Prevention of Sleeping Sickness . Nature 77, 36 (1907). https://doi.org/10.1038/077036a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/077036a0