The White Pine news. [volume] (Ely, Nev.) 1906-1910, 1908-07-04

Via> With the Rat as Dissemination Of
Thurman Diseases.

The rat. botn as a destroyer of
property and carrier of disease.
has. received MS share of attic. ton
FROM the scientific world. nut il is
ONLY slowly that the world at large
! Is waxing up to the menace of the
common house fly. The health aH-
thorities of several European cities
are continuing the study of this in
sect which they took up last summer
ana their reports are full of interest.
IN "a systematic study Of the flies
81 afming along the river fronts of
big cities. especially at the points
where sewers empty were found ap-
pallIfg results Not only, we're flies,
caught in specially prepared traps
along the river front, found to be
loaded with the germs of disease tone
Of them having the STAGGERING bur-
den Of more than one hundred thou
sand bacteria clustering over his
small hbdy), nut on examining the
fsports Of the cases Of deaths from
typhoid and other Intestinal diseases,
particularly the so-cailed summer d.
arrhoea Of children. II was found
that the cases formed a most unmiss
TAX able belt or zone all around the
water front at the lower end of the
city. covering just about the belt
which the short flying fly would
range over.
Fdftaer illumination showed. AN
other deadly parallel, and that was
that the numb Der Of these diseases in
creased step by step with the in
creased number of flies, and declined
in the fall when the plague of flies
subsidized AS the deaths from this
class of diseases was more than three
thousand for the city of Berlin, the
deadly record of the house ny is evil
dent enough.
The fly in question is the Musca
domestica, the fly domestic, in 80 to
95 per cent of the cases. His record
for destruction in America was made
evident in our own Spanish-American
war, when there was an outbreak of
| typhoid among our soldiers in the
home camps. Since the foreign re-
ports are drawn from those of our
government, they may be taken as
4 authoritative II was shown that
there died on our soil, in healthful
climate, thousands of soldiers, near
| ly ten times as many as were killed
in the field and at the front during
the entire campaign.
After the war was over, commits
sion of medical experts which was ap-
pointed TO study and report upon the
cause of these losses, was practically
unanimous in declaring that the prin-
cipal agency in the spread of this
pestilenee was the plague of flies
which sWarmed in al camps not
properly protected, feeding upon dis
charges from the earlier cases which
were thrown out into the regulation
trenches for camp sanitation, and
then promptly returning to crawl
over milk, butter, fruit AMI other
food in the unscreened cooking tents
and upon the unprotected mess TIA
bles
Just to put the possibility of this
form of carrying eontagion beyond
/ doubt, flies were allowed to feed upon
waste material inoculated with DIFF
ferent kinds of bacteria, and then
gelatine plates were spread where
| they could alight upon them. These
plates were then taken and placed in
an incubator, and in from "a TO As
hours they developed vast colonies of
bacteria, the seeds of which had been
deposited by the feet of the filthy fly
The meteorological world on both
sides of the Atlantic then began to
observe that wherever waste material
was exposed containing the germs
either of simple putrefaction or. Of
disease, flies would swarm about il,
and spread the eontagion upon every
thing that fly could alight upon for
from 200 to 600 yards in all direc-
tons round about.
Casual flies, passing through shops
and kitchens, around garbage bar
rels and stable yards were caught at
random and examined, and practical
ly every one of them was discovered
carrying bacteria of some sort on his
hairy legs and feet. Time and again
have flies been found carrying the
germs of tuberculosis picked up 10y
them from the sputum of typhoid, of
diphtheria. of blood poisoning. and
in the Orient of plague and of clfol-
era.
And now there is going to be
campaign against the fly here and
abroad. If the signs are read Alright.
There is only one thing absolutely
necessary to the development of the
fiy-refuse. The important point is
that il is not the mere scattering and
littering about of refuse that breeds
the fly, but its accumulation in
masses, receptacles, vaults or bins.
Continued on page severn