Eugene Jamot * - Born in 1879 with Borie, a hamlet of the commune of Saint-Sulpice-the-Fields, it made studies of medicine to Montpellier. In 1908 it settled with Sardent. Two years it renonça to later exert the medicine of countryside to pass the entrance examination to the School of application of the department of health of the colonial troops in Marseilles, known as " School of Pharo". Left into 1911 this high-place of training in tropical medicine, it made a first stay in Black Africa before entering to the Pasteur Institute of Paris where it studied until 1914 while specializing in the parasitoses. At the end of its training course it was named sub-manager of the Pasteur Institute of Brazzaville.

From 1916 to 1931 it was devoted to the fight against the human Trypanosomiase. More known under the name of Disease of the sleep, this parasitic disease is due to a Protozoaire transmitted animal to the man by the puncture of a fly (known as Tsetse fly). Always mortal in the absence of treatment, this disease owes her name with the fact that to the pre-final phase the patients present a permanent somnolence.

The African trypanosomiasis evolved/moved during the centuries by large epidemic waves. The Uganda and the Basin of the Congo were devastated of 1896 to 1906. From 1920 a second epidemic started to decimate central Africa and of the west. It is this second thorough which was effectively fought in Cameroun and the Burkina-Fasso by Colonel Jamot and his teams. This success was worth a considerable glory to him. It was covered with honors and was proposed for the Nobel Prize.

But, in November 1931, during one of his voyages between the France and the Cameroun, Colonel Jamot was unloaded of force with Dakar and put at the close arrest. The Ministry for the Overseas territories held it for personally responsible for serious therapeutic accidents which have occurred in the sector of Bafia, where 700 people had become blind following a treatment applied by one of its assistants.

At that time, only some drugs were effective. They were derived from the Arsenic, inducing notable toxic effects. One of these products (the Tryparsamide) had been managed by a young doctor - of his own initiative and without referring to Colonel Jamot about it - with triple amounts of those which were recommended. Tryparsamide started optical Névrites at nearly a thousand of patients, who became blind. Jamot could not put forward its innocence, and it paid dearly for the acts of its subordinate. It had to give up taking again its campaigns in Cameroun, and spent the following years to Ouagadougou in an environment of permanent suspicion.

Deeply discouraged, it took advantage of its rights to the retirement and at the beginning of 1936 it was withdrawn in Sardent which it had left 25 years before. It took again there with valiancy its last activity of country doctor. But the public rumor had continued it. Whatever was its immense glory passed, it had become " that which made blind of the thousands of africains". In spite of its devotion, its activity did not enable him to put an end to important financial problems. And it is a man broken morally and physically who died in Sardent on April 24th, 1937.

See too

• tropical Medicine

External bonds