A dramatic historical reconstruction of the discovery in 1901 by Drs Michael Forde, a colonial medical officer at Bathurst in the Gambia, and Joseph Everett Dutton (Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine) of trypanosome parasites in the blood of an Irish sailor suffering from the early stages of African sleeping sickness. This was the first time that trypanosomes had been detected in the blood of a European, and helped to dispel the belief that the disease only affected Africans. With Alexander John as Dr Michael Forde and Andrew Solomon as Dr Everett Dutton.