The Yakima herald. [volume] (North Yakima, W.T. [Wash.]) 1889-1914, 1909-09-08
means of fiy-traps set IN various places


| showed a remarkably close coinci-
dence between he prevalence Of flies
and the onset of fatal cases of ty-
! phoid fever. The convincing evidence
is that flies have been caught with
/ the goods.
1t is an old device, almost as old
as the science of bacteriology. to let
fly crawl about on a sterilized plate
| of nutritive gelatin such as is COM
monty employed for growing cultures
of bacteria. At first there is no sign;
but. after few hours i'm the incubator,
the insects track on the gelatin is out
! lined in nourishng colonies of mi
crobes. Virtually every time the fly
has put down any one of his six feet,
he has planted at least one germ. A
march of one inch results in a hum
dred vigorous cultures.
| II is a pretty clean fly that does not
bear a thousand germs. A fairly
dirty one will carry fifty thousand A
ny lust back from swill-pail or pig
pen, at the height of the season for
flies and germs, carries load APP
preaching the record number in a
drop of city milk-and this is well
into the millions.
To be sure, in ninety-nine cases out
of a hundred, these bacteria are pretty
harmless A few million bacilli OF
sour milk more or less, or even of the
common bacteria of putrefacuoh,
make no special difference one way or
the other. But there is always the
hunderdth case. A whole group Oh
dreadful diseases, among them ty-
phoid fever and the infectious intes-
final disorders that slaughter the lit
tie babies through the summer, are
propagated only as the feces of sick
person somehow or other mingle with
the food of a we'll one. What is there
that the house-fy likes better than
to wallow and feed in this! Then he
repairs to store or kitchen and crawls
over our food.
1t is easy to see why we, who dur
ing the Spanish war let the camp flies
do about as they liked, lost four men
by disease for every one by wounds;
while the japanese, who made war on
the flies in camp as efficiently as upon
the enemy in the field, lost four men
by wounds for one by disease. Per-
haps it's was just as well for us that
we were fighting Spain and not Japan.
A Perfect Continuance for Spreading
Fatal Diseases.
The fact is that, regarded as a con-
trivance for disseminating the germs
of fatal diseases. the fly is one Of ma
lures masterpieces. A fairly large bac-
terium is as much smaller than a fly
as fly is smaller than an elephant.
The microbes of many of our ordin-
airy contagious disorers are thou
sand times more minute than this.
The insect, moreover, is equipped
with spines, hairs, folds, cavities, and
projections innumerable for microbes
to cling to. In addition, each of it's
six little feet has the sticky pad which
we used to call a sucker, adhesive
enough to hold the fly on a window
pane, and therefore just the thing for
picking up germs by the hundred.
One may well credit reports of a
single fly, filthy from a swill-barrel
and loaded with $4,000 bacteria of
species alone. Moreover, the fly, liv-
ing on infected food, takes the mi
crobes into his own digestive tract,
carries them about for days, and de-
posits them by thousands in the fly
specks." There, for example, bac-
illus tuberculosis may live for two
weeks.
1t would be bad enough if the fly
merely crawled about in the sputum
of a tuberculous patient or the dejecta
of a case of typhoid, and then simply
infected the food on the way to our
mouths. 1t does worse than this: it
starts a culture of the deadly germs in
the food which we are to eat tOmOr-
row; and by the time tomorrow ar
rives. the single microbe has become
a thousand
Six Million and Half Germs to a Fly
Here is a sample of class of facts
which may well give pater familias
pause. At one of the Connecticut Agri-
cultural Experiment stations, by way
of finding out how may bacteria a fly
can transfer to a milk-jar, they tried
shaking up flies in steriized water and
estimating the number washed off.
The record number was 11S, 800, 900
from eighteen individuals, or more
than 100000 apiece.
These, to be sure, happened to be,
for the most part harmless. But sup
pose they had not happened to be
harmless! Recent experiments of the
Massachusetts State Board of Health
have shown that, at ordinary room
temperatures, bacillus typhosus at
least doubles it's number every three
and one half hours Bacillus dysen-
teriae multiplieS somewhat more
slowly, and bacillus diphtheriae half
as fast Cold, short of freezing, does
not affect any of the three. One ty-
phoid bacillus, therefore, in forty
eight hours becomes 10000, while a
culture of typhoid germs introduced
into milk not infrequently crowds out
the harmless sorts and becomes the
dominant species.
But microbes flourish and multiply
| in all sorts of human foods, and the
human body, which might have resist
| ed the attack of a small number
quickly succumbs when the enemy at
! tacks in force At Dartmouth college
they have lately tried testing air of
their class-rooms by letting the dust
settle on gelatin plates. If more than
forty bacteria settle in ten minutes
the room is disinfected. This method