The Birmingham age-herald., 1913-05-10
TIME TO SWAT THE FLY

DR.. Leonard *. Herschberg of Johns
| Hopkins Medical College.
THE summer about to dawn is the
| tenth anniversary of our conclu-
L size conviction and tangible proof
that the common nuisance and ubi-
uuitous plague, the pestiferous housefiy,
produces many dangerous malades, such
as typhoid, cholera, dysentery infantile
ailments and the like.
| True enough, ever since the government
report about the typhoid fever among
American soldiers in the Spanish war,
the housefy was fairly well known to be
responsible for the spfead of that infee-
! tlon. 1t was not, however, until the re-
searches of the ensuing years had ac-
| icumulated that the fy's guilt was estab-
lished beyond the cavil of a doubt:
| The proboscis, or what you might call
| the tongue, of the housefly, is most
| pernicious organ. Because the common
fly cannot chew or bite or suck or pierce
the skin, food must be served up to the
fly in liquid form. In other words, fly
| is always on a soft, liquid or fever
diet.
As a fly alights upon food, 1t sticks out
its tongue or proboscs by means of a
pair of air saes or vacuum cleaners,
which blow out the proboscis just as
YOU blow into glove to expand the
fingers. Another pump of the fy's mouth
sucks in the liquid food mixed with the
insects saliva The food passes through
the alimentary canal and the undesirable
parts are shot forth as hecks of dust and
moistened dirt from the under surface OF
the fy's body.
1t has been abundantly confirmed by
experiments that the fly not only stores
up food for days and weeks at time In
it's crop, but it also regurgitates fresn
as well as old food very often. A fly Will
thus regurgitate food out through its
mouth and proboscis mixed with saliva.
in order to dissolve and liquefy food that
is too solid for it to take. Indeed, MES
are so filthy in their habits that they
regurgitate and reswallow the same FOOD
many times These regurgitation spots
may be seen on white surfaces of window
names. and are easily distinguished from
spots of waste matter discharged by the
dy. because fthey are much lighter in
color than the latter
You NAV thus readily picture to your
self what takes place when fly gorged
with lquefed diet of typhoid material,
tuberculosis sputum, or mlcroberich mix,
hops gayly here and there on your ber-
ries, butter sugar bowl and kitchen uten-
sils. The apparently clean and harmless
| fly that idly glides into your kitchen
! from the passing garbage cart in order
| to have a bit of your butter, regurgitates
a few times here and there wherever it
alghts. Briefly, if fly wishes to sip
some nourishment from your table it must
regurgitate several times at least upon
the food it Graves. Some of it's elected
saliva and food may be the remnants of
fetid repasts obtained some days pre-
viously from the fithest places.
! Moreover, the sticky, gluey cushions
! upon a fy's feet are literally alive and
swarming with bacteria and other disease
spreading filth. The graceful act of a
fly walking upside down is due to this
mucilagnous material present upon the
insects feet. The footpads OF fly are
so glutinous that tney take up part OF
anything with which they come in con-
tact Every known disease germ and
contagion has been recovered from the
sole of f1y's foot
Since the abiding places of the musca
domestica are stables, barns, manure
heaps, rubbish boxes outhouses and any
| decaying animal or vegetable matter, you
may well imagine what varieties of germs
are encountered upon a fy's feet and in
side its hollow tongue and mouth. Such
delectable places are the breeding spot
of the mother fly. She lays her eggs in
a series of from 100 to 200 eggs at time
She usually lives long enough to real