The Mt. Sterling advocate. (Mt. Sterling, Ky.) 1890-current, 1909-08-25
THE HOUSE FLY.
Some Valuable Pointers For Use
In Campaign Against Them.

If you still consider the house
fly a nuisance chiefly because it
buzzed about your nose on Sunday
morning, and because it specks up
the gilt frame on the oil painting
in the parlor, you had better have
a talk with your family physician
on the subject. You need to be
revised and brought up to date on
this most vital problem of the pub
lie health. You are still reading
in the third reader, which, we all
remember, represents this insect
as sailing about, absorbing from
the air invisible but noXious par
ticles, thus purifying it for humans
to breathe.
The truth is that the fly is not
only an annoying insect, but a
carrier of disease compared with
which the mosquito is a petty Of
fender.
1t required the shameful waste
of human life among our soldiers
in the late Spanish war to demon
strate the fact that flies which
swarmed unhindered from stag
nant open sewers to the exposed
food supplies of the camp, spread
the terrible intestinal diseases,
dysentery and typhoid fever, that
kept nine-tenths of the men in the
hospitals and killed thousand to
every dozen that fell in battle.
Doctors know the life story and
the habits of the pestiferous house
fly, and ignorance on the part of
lay men is no longer excusable.
knowledge and intelligent action
will reduce the death rate in city
and country, and even within
your own family.
Flies come from eggs. But who
ever say a fiy's egg9 If there is a
heap of horse manure behind your
stable swarm of flies rests on it,
and the surface is dotted with the
small white eggs that hatch in
twenty-four hours or less into
small maggots, called larvae.
They burrow into the soggy mass,
fattening, casting their skins sew
eral times, and finally emerging
from brief pupal or chrysalis
period as adults in less than two
weeks from the egg.
1t is the adult fly that menaces
human life. 1t does not bite. 1t
has no piercing organ like the
mosquito. Press fy's head be-
tween the thumb and finger, and
the prObOscis is thrust out. y. 1t is
q iointed orgsn that spreads ct. the
end into two ridgedr hairy. basket
like halves that part in, the middle.
Watch fly as it eats. The, rasp-
ing surface of the probosois tips
lacerate the tissues of. juicy fruits
and soft foods. and suction draws
in the juice. Saliva moistens solid
foods, and the liquid is sucked up.
This is the only way fly can eat
them. Naturally, sticky or semi
fluid substances attract these in
sects. Rank filth, If it is not dry,
is always swarming with them.
Meats call flies by their odor.
Sweets, liquid or dry, are easily
eaten, and are always covered with
flies, unless protected.
The horror of the matter is that
flies range from foul sewers laden
with germs of deadly intestinal
diseases, like typhoid fever, to the
fruit stands, the market booths
and everywhere things we eat are
exposed to dust and insects. They
infest houses, hotels, restaurants,
hospitals even, settling on food on
the tables. falling into the milk on
pantry shelves and drowning in
the syrup Jug. These occurrences
are not confined to tenements.
Screens do not fully protect the
most careful housewife from the
fly nuisance. No human being
escapes exposure to contagious
diseases. l cringe everytime l
see fruit stand in town. What