Extracting blood, flies, and ideas: David and Mary Bruce, vernacular experts, and unakane in rural Zululand c. 1880s-1900s

In the 1890s, one of the most important scientific investigations in the early history of tropical medicine took place in rural Zululand, Colony of Natal. Since 1891, Zulu farmers’ cattle had been plagued by a deadly disease called unakane (livestock trypanosomiasis). Its cause was a subject of controversy: some blamed “big game”; others pointed at the tsetse fly, vegetation, or malaria. In 1894, the colonial government commissioned David Bruce, a Scottish-Australian surgeon-major who worked closely with his wife, Mary Bruce, to investigate. This chapter argues that the rural environment in which David Bruce was immersed was essential to his work: Zulu and settler farmers provided epidemiological theories, experimental animals, and manual labor. However, despite making major strides in the bacteriology of unakane, from which Bruce built an illustrious scientific career, his work offered almost no relief for the region, while the scientific contributions provided by local farmers were racialized and eventually forgotten.