Newark evening star and Newark advertiser. [volume] (Newark, N.J.) 1909-1916, 1911-06-27
FLY IS MENACE
TO PUBLIC HEALTH
Summer Complaint Due in Great
Part to Dangerous
Pest.
ILL.,.

III.
In the previous article of this fly
fighting campaign the Evening STAR
showed how dangerous a carrier of ty-
phoid fever the housefly. is. If that
we're it's only crime, wen SO it would
be desirable to eradicate the fly, which,
unlike bad air Or water. is an evil that
can be permanently removed. II we pre-
vent the breeding of flies.
But typhoid carrying is no its only
crime. 1t bears a great part of the
diarrhoea or summer complaint"
which kills thousands Of children every
summer. In 1908 50, 213 died Of summer
complaint, of which 44,521 were babes
under 2 years of age; 44,621 children
many of whom were infected by dis
ea~se-bearing flies.
Kill the fly; prevent his breeding;
screen from his eager feeding-and dis
children.
Consumption.
The fly is one Of the greatest bearers
of this most devastating OF diseases.
DR.. Leland o. Howard, In '"rhe
House Fly-Disease Carrier gives a
terrible picture-so terrible that every
reader of the Evening STAR should
look at 1t, and make sure that such
conditions are wiped out forever. DR..
Howard quotes one of his assistants to
the effect that at a Colorado resort for
c~onsumptives he had often seen pa
TENTS sitting on the porch, expectorat-
ing over the rail-. Numerous flies IN
gregated about the sputa-and then
headed for the open windows of the
kitchen, a few fee away.
Cobb, Haushalter, Hayward, Buchan-
an and dozens Of others nave shown
that flies gather tubercular germs from
tuberculous sputa and carry them to
the food of well persons-persons well,
that Is, unless the flies succeed in
carrying out their mission of death.
DR.. Frederick T. Lord, after a series
of long n careful laboratory investi-
cations, reached rhe following conclu-
sions regarding the carrying of on
sumption by flies.
l. Flies may suck up tubercular spu-
tum and excrete tubercle bacilli, the
virulence Of which may last for at
least fifteen days.
2. The danger of human infection
from tubercular ~fy-specks is in swal-
lowing the specks with food.
What We must do:
/. Tubercular material (sputum. III
from discharging %sinuses, focal matter
from patients, etc., must be carefully
---A--k5 f,-.a atA4 1oe@ NAh axr aAt n \ IL
and carry the bacilli.
2. During the fly season greater at
tention should be paid to the screening
of rooms containing patients with tu-
berculosis.
8. AS these precautions would not
eliminate infection Of flies by patients
who are at their homes, all foodstuffs
should be protected from flies.
Dysentery.
English army surgeons have suspect
ed for years that flies were the chief
epidemics, but no exact proof was found
till last year, 1910. when DR.. Orion. Of
the Worcester State Hospital for the
Insane. found that flies, breeding in
huge numbers In piles of hops used as
fertilizer neal the hospital, were in
Testing the hospital. carrying the dys-
EMERY germs from patient to patient.
Smallpox and Diphtheris.
There is far less evidence regarding
the carriage of these two diseases by
flies: though Nuttall and Jepson have
found that there have been cases of
such carriage. One important doctor.
at least, Laforgue, the Frenchman, be-
lieves, after his experience with a
played a most important part in the
carriage of the disease
Other Diseases.
DR.. Leland o. Howard discovered in
al epidemic Of pink-eye among Florida
school-children that flies, settling about
the eyes OF children with the disease,
promptly carried it to others. In the
came way, flies settle in swarms on
the eyes of Egyptians with ophthalmia.
a terrible eye disease, and carry of
the infection.
In the cases Of parasitic worms,
which often trouble children, flies carry
the eggs OF the worms from the dis
charges of afflicted children to the food
of others.
With yaws-a tropical d~isease-an-
thrax and others. the case against the
fly has been proven also.
We are only beginning to find u in
just how many diseases flies are the
chief carriers of infection. But enough
has been discovered to indict the fly as
the most dangerous to man of all crea-
lures.
IT, Ia I'm fo ,,a I'm 70 avery reader of