Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1911-06-23
THE FLY 4 MENACE
To PUBLIC HEALTH
Carries Typhoid Germs, Spread
ing Disease and Causing
Many Deaths.

A single Misunderstanding house fly
may carry from $500, 900 to $500. 900 bac-
terra. These germs may be, often are,
the germs of typhoid fever, in part.
The fly not only bears away on it's legs
tiny particles from a typhoid patients
discharges-on which it gladly feeds,
whenever possible-but it also carries
virulent typhoid bacilli in its digestive
organs.
These germs 1t takes to the food of
other persons, leaving them in quanti-
ties. On every tiny spot On your fam
ily's food that has been touched by a
fly which has fed on typhoid discharges
a colony of bacteria begins to grow
with huge rapidity. If you are not in
the right physical c-ondition-and are
you in hot summer days?-you have an
excellent chance to catch typhoid fever
from this contaminated food.
1.25O,OOO Germs Per Fly.
One single footprint of a house fly
was found by Cobb to have left $50, 900
fungus spores, 1,250. 600 is the average
humber of bacteria per fly found by
Esten and Mason in experiments with
Ala flies which had fed at cow stables,
garbage. barrels, pig-pens, etc.
How do we know what the fly does?
By careful experiments of great scien-
lists. DR.. Leland o. Howard, chief of
the United States government bureau
of entomology, in his The House Fly
Disease Carrier" a complete manual on
he fly and how to fight it, published
by Frederick A. Stokes Company, this
spring, gives scores of experiments
which show that disease germs by the
million have been found on flies by
both laboratory scientists and army
surgeons.
In our national encampments in 1898,
one-fifth of the soldiers developed ty-
phoid. While water was partly to
blame. the doctors have determined
that the fly was the chief agent for this
terrible spread of disease.
Flies Prosecute the Sick.
The Evening STAR could quote a
hundred examples. Here are a few,
mostly from army surgeons, of high
rank and scientific training. Drs.
Tooth and Calverley, of the British
army. found in the Boer war tina in
tents full of sick fnen the flies left
sufferers from sunstroke alone, but set
tied pitilessly on the faces of typhoid
patients-and then swarmed over food.
II was llCl lOlcQ that MiitH tie COlQ
weather killed the flies the typhoid
stopped.
From India Lieutenant Colonel f. w.
C. Jones shows that flies are the chief
carriers of typhoid, and that all of us,
who carelessly eat food which we nave
allowed to be touched by the filth
bearing flies, are nothing less than
eaters of filth.
Aside from army camps, in the or
binary peaceful cities proofs of the
6y's disease-bearing have been found,
though here, where there are no army
in charge of every man, it is
harder to investigate.
AS, for the wholesome country, doc
tors have shown that practically all of
the terribly prevalent typhoid is borne,
moi SO much by bad water, but by flies,
visiting the ~outhouses of various sorts
which are usually, in the country and
small towns, left exposed to the flies.
Milk and Butter.
Once the country flies thus gather
germs they can leave them in milk or
butter, for transportation to crowded
cities. They gather thickly about most
diaries, markets, ETC., and typhoid
germs will live in milk for twenty days
ready to infect us-in the very milk
that goes to our children-while in but
ter the germs will live for 140 days!
In a number of cases cited
by DR.. L. o. Howard in his
book, scientists have had flies walk
over M feed on solutions containing
typhoid bacilli. When these flies were
transferred to clean containers they
always were found to carry the germs
to the new vessels.
Typhoid causes more deaths in one
year than yellow fever does in fifty
and flies cause 95 per cent. OF typhoid
in many rural and some city districts.
What makes 1t most dangerous IL
that even where there are nc typhoid
patients about, still flies can collect
the germs and carry them to us. For a
good-sized proportion of typhoid
patients, even when absolutely cured
so far as feeling goes, continued tn
carry typhoid germs In their excreta
for years. These persons, called
chronic carriers are likely to be
sources of danger for the rest of their
~lives-unless we destroy the flies hat
carry these germs.
What Is to be done? What are read
ers of the Evening STAR to do2 Three
things:
First, screen all houses-especially
kitchens-all restaurants, all grocery
stores; every place where flies can
get at food.
Second, all hlth-manure, garbage,
human excreta (this most dangerous of
all, a thing not to be squeamish about,
but to be dealt with by sensible men
and women sensibly. particularly where