# Sleeping Sickness Mission and Pasteur Institute (1906)

URL: https://allhistories.com/republic-of-the-congo/timeline/1906-sleeping-sickness-mission-and-pasteur-institute
Location: Brazzaville, Republic of the Congo
Themes: main-event

The sleeping sickness epidemic ravaging the Congo basin alarmed colonial authorities, who feared the depopulation of the colony and the loss of its labour force. In the Congo Free State and British Uganda researchers had recently identified the trypanosome parasite and the tsetse fly as its vector, and France sought to organise its own response. In 1906 the Société de géographie and the Pasteur Institute in Paris sent a mission to French Congo led by the army doctor Gustave Martin, with Alexis Leboeuf and the entomologist Émile Roubaud. Over two years they surveyed the disease along the rivers, studied the tsetse fly and tested treatments such as atoxyl. Their work led to the creation in 1908 of a Pasteur Institute in Brazzaville, one of the first research laboratories in French central Africa. The Brazzaville institute became a centre for research into sleeping sickness and other tropical diseases, and its work underpinned the mobile medical campaigns later associated with Eugène Jamot. The present building of the Institut Pasteur was erected in the following decade, among the first major public buildings of the colonial capital. At this point in the timeline (1906–1908), the President of France was Émile Loubet (18 February 1899 – 18 February 1906); the Commissioner-General of French Congo was Émile Gentil (21 January 1904 – 13 February 1908); the Acting Commissioner-General of French Congo was Édouard Telle (17 August 1905 – 11 May 1906). Government: the Chief Administrator of Middle Congo was Émile Gentil (11 July 1902 – 5 April 1906).

## Why it matters
The sleeping sickness mission founded medical research in the Congo and created the Pasteur Institute of Brazzaville.

Ruler at the Time: [Émile Loubet](https://allhistories.com/republic-of-the-congo/rulers/emile-loubet)

Commissioner-General of French Congo: Émile Gentil
Chief Administrator of Middle Congo: Émile Gentil
Acting Commissioner-General of French Congo: Édouard Telle

## Sources
- [Wikipedia — African trypanosomiasis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_trypanosomiasis)
- [Wikipedia — Pasteur Institute](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pasteur_Institute)
- [Wikipédia (français) — Maladie du sommeil](https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maladie_du_sommeil)
- [Wikipedia — Brazza And The French Conquest (period overview)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Congo)