Cuthbert Christy

Cuthbert Christy
Christy in Uganda in 1902
Born	1863 Chelmsford, Essex, England
Died	29 May 1932 (aged 68–69) Aka River region, Belgian Congo
Nationality	British
Occupation	Medical practitioner, explorer
Known for	Christy commission report on slavery in Liberia

Cuthbert Christy (1863 – 29 May 1932) was an English doctor and zoologist who undertook extensive explorations of Central Africa during the first part of the 20th century. He was known for his work on sleeping sickness, and for the Christy Report on practices very similar to slavery in Liberia in the 1920s.

Cuthbert Christy was born in 1863, son of Robert Christy of Chelmsford. He was educated at Olivers Mount School, in Scarborough, North Yorkshire, then won a Mackenzie bursary to the University of Edinburgh. He graduated in 1892. He travelled widely in South America and the West Indies between 1892 and 1895. He was senior medical officer to the second battalion, West African Field Force in Northern Nigeria from 1898 to 1900. He was then appointed special medical officer for plague duty in Bombay, working in the Plague Laboratory in that city.

Christy became a highly skilled naturalist. In 1902 he was chosen as a member of a three-man British government commission to investigate trypanosomiasis (sleeping sickness) in Uganda. The other two were George Carmichael Low and Aldo Castellani. An epidemic of the disease was raging in Uganda, and almost 14,000 people had died by the spring of 1902. The three-man reached Kisumu in July 1902. Christie undertook a survey to create a map showing where the disease was found, travelling from place to place, taking blood samples, recording symptoms and trapping mosquitoes.

Christy was a member of a team sponsored by the Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine that arrived in the Congo Free State on 23 September 1903 to assess public health, and sleeping sickness in particular. His companions were Joseph Everett Dutton and John Lancelot Todd, and they were joined in the Congo by Inge-Valdemar Heiberg. The team spent nine months in the Lower Congo, then on 30 June 1904 began investigating upstream as far as Kasongo.