Note 331 — VI

[It has been suggested that there is a mention of the tsetse-fly in the Bible. The 18th and 19th verses of the 7th chapter of Isaiah, in prophesying threatened scourges, read as follows: ‘And it shall come to pass in that day that the Lord shall hiss (i.e. whistle) for the fly that is in the uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt, and for the bee that is in the land of Assyria. And they shall come and shall rest all of them in the desolate valleys, and in the holes of the rocks, and upon all thorns, and upon all bushes [in margin, or commendable trees].’ The ‘uttermost part of the rivers of Egypt’ can hardly mean anything else than the headwaters of the Nile, viz. the Victoria Nyanza, whilst by the usual law of antithesis in Hebrew composition, the first half of the 19th verse will refer to the bee and the second half to the fly, i.e. that the flies shall rest ‘upon all thorns and upon all bushes’, and it is the well-known habit of the tsetse-fly to rest on the thorny ambach-shrubs near the Lake.

Arguing from this in an article in the Royal Geographical Society’s Journal for February, 1913, Dr. Felix Oswald remarks that although sleeping sickness only entered Uganda eleven years ago from the west, it is not improbable that it may have existed in the region of the great African lakes in past ages, subsequently disappearing. In the discussion on the paper, Sir Percy Girouard gave it as his opinion that the disease had spent its force in West Africa through centuries, and had become endemic.]