Handbook of Medical EntomologyRiley, William A. (William Albert)
Science
Handbook of Medical Entomology
Riley, William A. (William Albert)
Insect pests; Insects as carriers of disease; Medical parasitology
When flies are very abundant in a room they can be most readily gotten
rid of by fumigation with sulphur, or by the use of pure pyrethrum
powder either burned or puffed into the air. Herrick (1913) recommends
the following method: "At night all the doors and windows of the kitchen
should be closed; fresh powder should be sprinkled over the stove, on
the window ledges, tables, and in the air. In the morning flies will be
found lying around dead or stupified. They may then be swept up and
burned." This method has proved very efficaceous in some of the large
dining halls in Ithaca.
The writers have had little success in fumigating with the vapors of
carbolic acid, or carbolic acid and gum camphor, although these methods
will aid in driving flies from a darkened room.
All of these methods are but makeshifts. As Howard has so well put it,
"the truest and simplest way of attacking the fly problem is to prevent
them from breeding, by the treatment or abolition of all places in which
they can breed. To permit them to breed undisturbed and in countless
numbers, and to devote all our energy to the problem of keeping them out
of our dwellings, or to destroy them after they have once entered in
spite of all obstacles, seems the wrong way to go about it."
We have already seen that _Musca domestica_ breeds in almost any
fermenting organic material. While it prefers horse manure, it breeds
also in human feces, cow dung and that of other animals, and in refuse
of many kinds. To efficiently combat the insect, these breeding places
must be removed or must be treated in some such way as to render them
unsuitable for the development of the larvæ. Under some conditions
individual work may prove effective, but to be truly efficient there
must be extensive and thorough coöperative efforts.
Manure, garbage, and the like should be stored in tight receptacles and
carted away at least once a week. The manure may be carted to the fields
and spread. Even in spread manure the larvæ may continue their
development. Howard points out that "it often happens that after a lawn
has been heavily manured in early summer the occupants of the house will
be pestered with flies for a time, but finding no available breeding
place these disappear sooner or later. Another generation will not breed
in the spread manure."
Hutchinson (1914) has emphasized that the larvæ of houseflies have
deeply engrained the habit of migrating in the prepupal stage and has
shown that this offers an important point of attack in attempts to
control the pest. He has suggested that maggot traps might be developed
into an efficient weapon in the warfare against the house-fly. Certain
it is that the habit greatly simplifies the problem of treating the
manure for the purpose of killing the larvæ.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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