 The disease was named after the Brazilian physician and <unk> Carlos Chagas , who first described it in 1909 . The disease was not seen as a major public health problem in humans until the 1960s ( the outbreak of Chagas disease in Brazil in the 1920s went widely ignored ) . Dr Chagas discovered that the intestines of <unk> ( now <unk> : Triatominae ) <unk> a <unk> <unk> , a new species of the Trypanosoma genus , and was able to demonstrate experimentally that it could be transmitted to <unk> monkeys that were bitten by the infected bug . Later studies showed <unk> monkeys were also vulnerable to infection . 
