The Birmingham age-herald., 1908-04-19
"SHOO FLY' METHOD WILL DO NJ GOOD Pest Must Be Fought In the
 HatCheries MORE ABOUT HOUSE FLY Physician Discusses importance of Get ting at Source of Trouble and the
 UseIessness of Trying To
 "End Careers of Flies"
MORE ABOUT HOUSE FLY

A prominent member of the Medical society who has interested Birmingham people deeply in the fight against the death dealing house fly, today gives 8 concise statement of the way to war against this disease carrying pest. He says:
 In last Sundays paper you printed a somewhat lengthy article on the house fly. In beginning that article my intention was to show the value of a few concise scientific facts, the meaning of which, appealing to the reasoning faculties of the interested reader would be of more value, in an educational way, than a greater mass of vague generalizations about the benefit of cleaning up the filth. In arguing this point I used Gin illustra tion) some facts about the mode of propagation and habits of the common house fly and, perhaps, became some what vague myself, as the intent of my article was largely lost sight of and the article accepted as an essay on the fly.
 Allowing it to go at that I hope you will not mind my mildly recurring to my first purpose of pointing out to you newspaper gentlemen the impor tance of getting scientific facts down correctly when you write about them. I tried to show in my Sunday article that the one important point to be re- membered by the citizen at home Is that flies breed in horse manure and nowhere else. The fact is merely stated and the importance of it is left to the common sense of the reader. It is also left to his reasoning powers to determine what steps should be taken to lessen the number of the flies about us. I confess I thought it would not be necessary to point out the facts in the order of their impor- tance.
 In an editorial today you say, "how best to end their careers is the trou- ble before us.'' I think this will illus trate what I tried to show last Sunday, namely, that a scientific fact wrongly stated will not only do no good in an educational way, but may do harm. If exterminating the flies is our task it is a hopeless one and when you teach people that that is what they must do many will simply sit down and wait for some one to invent method of killing them and neglect that which they should do.
 Please allow me to reiterate and in sist that the important, the simple and reasonable things to do is first to les sen the number that are matched in the manure piles, remove all filth upon which they feed and by the use of screens protect the family's food. Screens all over the house for those who can afford them and screens for the food, at least, everywhere. It will be a complete loss of time to attempt to lend their careers"
 It may take a long time for the ex- ercise Of such efforts to make any appreciable difference in the number of flies, but the habit of fighting them in this way once formed the result will be better each year as more people become interested in the matter. Even with the utmost diligence there will still be plenty to go round perhaps, but we ought finally to limit the num- Der to the few that follow the country horses to town; this of course when we have entirely eliminated or screened the manure piles where ey breed and greatly diminished the number of places where they feed. I hope the importance of the subject will cause you to pardon me for this friendly crit icisim of your scientific method.