House Flies

CARRIAGE OF DISEASE.

In army camps, in mining camps, and in great public works, bringing together large numbers of men for a longer or shorter time, there is seldom the proper care of excreta, and the carriage of typhoid germs from the latrines and privies to food by flies is common and often results in epidemics of typhoid fever.

And such carriage of typhoid by flies is by no means confined to these great temporary camps. In farmhouses in small communities and even in the badly cared-for portions of large cities typhoid germs are carried from excrement to food by flies, and the proper supervision and treatment of the breeding places of the house fly become most important elements in the prevention of typhoid.

In the same way other intestinal germ diseases are carried by flies. The Asiatic cholera, dysentery, and infantile diarrhea are all so carried.


Nor are the disease-bearing possibilities of the house fly limited to intestinal germ diseases. There is strong circumstantial evidence that tuberculosis, anthrax, yaws, ophthalmia, smallpox, tropical sore, and parasitic worms may be and are so carried. Actual laboratory proof exists in the cases of a number of these diseases, and where lacking is replaced by circumstantial evidence amounting almost to certainty.