Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 124, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 26 May 1914 — WAR ON THE FILTHY FLY [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

WAR ON THE FILTHY FLY

AR FROM looking upon them as dipterous angels dancing attendance on Hygeia, regard them rather in the light of winged sponges spreading hither and thither to carry out the foul behests of contagion.”—Sir John Lubbock. Other names have been suggested for the house-fly to bring out some special characteristic or to indicate its nature as a carrier of disease. Accordingly, Dr. C. W. Stiles of the United States public health and hospital marine service suggested for

it the name of "filth-fly” to indicate that it is hatched and reared in filth and that it abounds wherever filth abounds. Dr. L. O. Howard of the United States department of agriculture named it the "typhoid fly,” from the fact that it is a ready carrier and disseminator of the germs which cause typhoid fever. With the first advent of spring weather the housefly appears. During the long winter months it has been hibernating. It was too cold for the fly to live and be active. Barring certain places where the temperature is high and food abundant, the fly is not seen during the winter months. Soon after musca domestlca has made its appearance it is in search of a place to breed. The female fly has got to lay her eggs. Nothing suits her better as a depository for her eggs than a pile of horse manure. She, therefore, makes hel way to the stable, and that is the reason why stables are so densely Infested with these insects. There they breed In countless numbers. In the absence of the favorite manure pile, any fermenting and putrid animal and vegetable matter will suit Whenever a fly is seen it is positive proof of / the existence of some filth in the neighborhood. It is much more filthy and much more dangerous to have files in the kitchen and dining room than to have bedbugs in the bedroom. Every open garbage can, every bit of exposed food, every stagnant bit of water means another nursery and refuge for the pest. And each individual fly is the breeding place for as many . germs as there are flies in the average fly nursery! Flies can carry various disease germs to man. By so doing they kill thousands of people, especially babies, every year; therefore, kill the flies and save the babies. t If files have access to human excrement they not only feed upon It, but they lay their eggs in it. After a few hours the egg hatches out a maggot; this feeds in the filth for several (about five) days and then forms a pupa; after about five days the adult fly comes out of the pupal case, feeds on the filth, and carries disease germs from the filth to the house, depositing these germs on the foods. Thus files carry disease to people. A fly drops his excrement about once every four and a half minutes and. may spread germs not only in this way, but also with his feet, wings, and mouth parts. Even if excrement containing fly maggots is burled under as much as six feet of sand, the maggots can crawl to the surface, bringing disease germs with them. Thus it is clear that if flies are kept away from human excrement, not only will they decrease in numbers, but they will be prevented from spreading certain diseases, such as typhoid fever.

The germs that the fly happens to alight upon with its feet or to suck up with its food -it is ready to carry away and deposit elsewhere. Just as often as not a fly will alight upon the worst kind of unmentionable filth, filled with all sorts of germs, and thence will make for a jug of milk or any other article of diet prepared for human consumption that happens to come in its way. The fly is a ready carrier of the germs of tuberculosis, since these are found especially in the

dried sputum expectorated by persons afflicted with that disease. It is a ready carrier and disseminator of the germs of typhoid fever also. It carries these germs from the privy or other filth and deposits them upon all kinds of food in the kitchen. It may even pollute the entire water supply of a community. Tuberculosis and typhoid, however, though the most important, are not by any means the only diseases which the fly can carry. Asiatic cholera, bubonic plague, bacillary dysentery, summer diarrhea of Infants, anthrax, the tropical disease known as yaws, ophthalmia or pink eye of children, diphtheria and smallpox and certain parasitic worms—all these may be carried by the fly and the infection spread either through the medium of food or by direct contact with man. Owing to the great prevalence and the large mortality in the United States caused by summer diarrhea of children, the fly M the carrier of the germs of this malady becomes at once a most important factor to consider in the efforts made to save child life, and no mother should be ignorant of this fact The food given little children should be carefully guarded against coming in contact with the house-fly. The remedies to be used against the fly may he divided Into two classes: Those which the community may use through the agency of boards of health and those which the Individual cttlsan should employ to protect his house against the entrance of those pests and to guard his foodstuffs against contamination by them, „ .

There is one duty that once understood can hardly be neglected. Any material known to contain germs of disease should be disposed of immediately so that no flies may come in contact with it. In the large cities this has been largely effected through the Installation of modern systems of sanitary drainage. In the smaller towns and villages, where no sewerage systems exist, this can be accomplished by the use of the sanitary privy. This, however, is only partly successful. The ideal method would be to rid a place of flies altogether by destroying their breeding places. The horse manure of stables can be so handled and treated as to kill all the eggs, the larvae and the pupae found in them. If these were totally destroyed no flies could possibly exist The individual citizen must protect his own house against the entrance of the fly. Screening is the best method known; but in spite of all

screening some flies will make their way into the home. These must be killed. An easy way to accomplish it is to take some soft, flat object such as a rolled-up newspaper and kill them by the simple means of striking them. If there be too many of these insects to go after in that manner, there are many excellent fly-traps and fly poisons that can be made to do effectual work. By all these methods combined flies may be got rid of. One matter of moment and the only one which is in the hands of the housekeeper alone is the habit of keeping all foodstuffs carefully covered and away from the possibility of contact with flies. The house-fly costs the United States |350,000,000» a year. In other words, he deprives the American people annually of 170,000,000 years of

human life, or 4,000,000 lives of the present average length. For screens to obstruct his entrance into our homes we spend each year $10,000,000. Yet his Intrusion into millions of dwelling places remains unchecked. He is born and bred in the filth on which he feeds, and his pestilential progress from dunghill to dining room brings disease and death. Flies kill more persons than wild beasts or poisonous snakes. Many of these animals and reptiles never get a chance to kill any human beings; but any one of the millions of files found in most of our towns and cities, If he comes into a house carrying typhoid germs, has a chance of killing a . whole family. Startling facts and unpleasant truths. The earliest convincing evidence of the part played by house-flies in the dissemination of the typhoid bacillus was furnished by Drs. Vaughan, Veeder, Reed, Sternberg and Shakespeare, who investigated camp conditions during the SpanishAmerican war. Dr. Vaughan, a member of the United States army typhoid commission, summarized his reasons for believing that flies were active In the dissemination of typhoid fever in these paragraphs: “(a) Flies swarmed over infected fecal matter in the pits, and then visited and fed upon the foods prepared for the soldiers in the mess tents. In some instances where Ume had recently been sprinkled over the contents of the pits, flies, with their feet whitened with lime, were seen walking over the food.

“(b) Officers whose mess tents were protected by screens suffered proportionately less from typhoid fever than did those whose tents were not protected. “(c) Typhoid fever gradually disappeared with the approach of cold weather and the consequent disabling of the fly.” In organizing a fly-swatting campaign the following steps are most important: 1. To educate the people as to the deadly nature of the fly. 2. To kill off all winter flies —those hiding about the houses, awaiting their season to forage. 3. To do away with all breeding places for files. 4. To trap all flies that happen to escape. The extermination of the winter fly is a problem for the individual housekeeper. Don’t let

one fly escape. Hunt for them and kill them early, for the winter fly is the mother of all the summer’s terrible swarm. To do away with the fly breeding places is merely a matter of cleanliness. Clean houses, gardens and yards. Clean streets and alleyways. Discourage the fly in its breeding proclivities. Carrying out the fourth step, the sale of fly-traps should be encouraged in all stores. These aro > marvelous little wire screenhouses, which are baited with milk, wherein a fly, once trapped,

is doomed. They may be placed on porches, window sills, garbage pails—anywhere that flies are likely to congregate, but always outside the house. Then the fly has no chance to come inside and spread disease add dirt To sum it all up, swat the fly before he Is born.