On a Horse Disease in India Known as “Surra,” Probably Due to a Hæmatozoon

History of sleeping sickness (African trypanosomiasis)

“…These observations were rapidly confirmed elsewhere and initiated a search for trypanosomes in domesticated animals. In 1880 the first of a series of significant discoveries in this area was made by a veterinarian, Evans [7], who found trypanosomes (now T evansi) in the blood of camels, horses, and mules suffering from a wasting disease called surra in the Punjab and associated them with the disease but thought that it was acquired from drinking water. In 1894 Bruce [8] discovered the trypanosomes, now called T brucei brucei, associated with nagana (the Zulu word for low spirits) a wasting disease of cattle and other domesticated and wild animals in Africa.…”

“…Bruce had already established himself in the field of bacteriology, had worked with the bacteriologist Robert Koch, and had identified the bacterium Brucella as the cause of Malta fever now known as brucellosis in 1884. He had expected to find a bacterial cause for nagana but instead found trypanosomes in the blood of diseased cattle and realized that these resembled the trypanosome (T evansi) that Evans [7] had found in horses and other animals suffering from surra in India a few years earlier [8]. Bruce [8] had no doubt that the trypanosome was the cause of fly disease and wrote:…”