Cuthbert Christy

Cuthbert Christy (* 1863 in Chelmsford ; † May 29, 1932 ) was a British doctor and zoologist. In the first half of the 20th century he explored Central Africa intensively. He delivered papers on African trypanosomiasis and produced the Christy Report, which dealt with conditions in Liberia in the 1920s that were very similar to slavery (the so-called Fernando Po scandal ).

Early years

Cuthbert Christy was born in Chelmsford in 1863 to Robert Christy . He attended school in Scarborough , North Yorkshire and received a Mackenzie Fellowship from the University of Edinburgh . He graduated in 1892 and traveled in South America and the West Indies between 1892 and 1895.

Between 1898 and 1900 he served as a medical officer in the West African Army of the British. He served as an expert in disease control in Bombay .

African travel

Christy was appointed head of a three-person government commission in 1902 to investigate trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) in Uganda. His colleagues were George Carmichael Low and Aldo Castellani . In the Congo Free State in 1903 he examined the same disease with Joseph Everett Dutton , John Lancelot Todd , Inge-Valdemar Heiberg . Christy worked in Ceylon in 1906 and in Uganda and East Africa between 1906 and 1909 , then in Nigeria .

Between 1911 and 1914 he worked for the Belgian government in the Belgian Congo and researched sleeping sickness. In 1916 he headed the British military hospital in Dar es Salaam and later in Mesopotamia .

Between 1920 and 1923 he explored the Bahr el Ghazal in what is now South Sudan . Between 1925 and 1928 he led an expedition to Lake Tanganyika for the Natural History Museum . Between 1928 and 1929 he worked in French Equatorial Guinea .

Christy Commission

In 1929, American missionaries reported that government agencies in Liberia had set up a system that would practically mean slavery. Soldiers forcibly forced villagers to do hard labor on Fernando Po Island . The Liberian government denied this and allowed a League of Nations commission to investigate the incident. Cuthbert Christy was head of this commission and Charles S. Johnson was the US representative on this commission. She began her work on April 8, 1930. Christy was fundamentally critical of US activities in Liberia. Mainly because the Firestone Tire and Rubber Company was involved in slavery. Johnson and Christy did not agree on all points, but they published the final report together. In September 1930 the report was published which stated that conditions resembling those of slavery prevailed in Liberia. As a result, President Charles DB King and Vice President Allen N. Yancy both resigned.

Death and memory

In 1932 Christy was traveling in the Aka River region in the Belgian Congo . He carried out zoological studies for the Belgian government and shot a Cape buffalo there. The wounded animal attacked him and seriously injured him. He died of his injuries on May 29, 1932. The snakes Naja christyi (Congolese water cobra), Chamaelycus christyi , Polemon christyi and the cichlid Aristochromis christyi are named after him.

Works

• Mosquitoes and malaria: a summary of knowledge on the subject up to date; with an account of the natural history of some mosquitoes, 1900
• The distribution of sleeping sickness, 1903
• The epidemiology and etiology of sleeping sickness in Equatoriae East Africa, 1903
• Reports of the Trypanosomiasis Expedition to the Congo 1903-1904 of the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine and Medical Parasitology, 1904
• The African rubber industry and Funtumia elastica, 1911
• Big Game and Pygmies: Experiences of a Naturalist in Central African Forests in Quest of the Okapi, 1924
• Cuthbert Christy Expedition, 1926
• Report of the International commission of inquiry into the existence of slavery and forced labor in the republic of Liberia. Monrovia, Liberia, September 8, 1930
• Notes on the Prevention of Malaria
• Notes on the Preservation of Personal Health in Warm Climates