Handwritten texts on verso contact print reads, " Lusambo. A sick child."
Judge E. Gorlia's first journey in the Belgian Congo from December 1909 to January 1912.
In the first quarter of the century sleeping-sickness constituted much of the most serious menace to the existence of the native population. While the tsetse-fly was most active in the spread of the disease in the Congo, the symptoms of the terminal stage of infection in which the central nervous system is involved are responsible for the name sleeping-sickness.
Advanced cases are generally sheltered in lazarettos, hospitals or near rural dispensaries.
Lusambo was established in February 1890 as a fortified camp on the Sankuru River, from which place the Congo Free State could conduct exploration of katanga and military operations against the Arabs in the Lomami-Lualaba area. In 1910 it was the headquarters of the Kasai province and a growing commercial post. The Roman Scheut Fathers, the American Presbyterian church and the Methodist Episcopal had important Missions nearby Lusambo.
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Title source: Archives staff; title not provided by photographer.
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