Insects and Diseases: A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread or Cause some of our Common DiseasesDoane, Rennie Wilbur
Science
Insects and Diseases: A Popular Account of the Way in Which Insects may Spread or Cause some of our Common Diseases
Doane, Rennie Wilbur
Insect pests; Insects as carriers of disease
The problem is a larger one than keeping the house free from flies;
larger but not more difficult, for the remedy is simple, effective,
practicable and inexpensive. Destroy their breeding-places and you will
have no flies. As the flies breed principally in manure the first
remedial measure is to see that all manure is removed from the
barn-yard at least once a week and spread over the fields to dry, for
the flies cannot breed in the dry manure. If it is not practicable to
remove it this often the manure should be kept in a bin that is closed
so tight that no flies can get into it to lay their eggs. Sometimes the
manure may be treated with some substance such as kerosene, crude oil,
chlorid of lime, tobacco water or mixture of two or more of these and
thus rendered unsuitable for the flies to breed in, but in general
practice none of them has been found very satisfactory for the treatment
is either not thorough enough or is too expensive of time and material.
Outdoor privies and cesspools must be carefully attended to. The latter
can be easily covered so no flies can get in and if the filthy and in
every way dangerous pit under the privy be filled and the dry-earth
closet substituted one of the greatest sources of danger, especially in
the country and in towns with inadequate sewerage facilities, will be
done away with. After these things are done there remain only the
garbage cans and the rubbish heaps to look after.
Of course your neighbor must keep his place clean too, for his flies are
just as apt to come into your house as his, so the problem becomes one
for the whole community.
Almost all cities and many of the smaller towns have ordinances which
if enforced would afford adequate protection from flies, but they are
seldom if ever rigidly enforced and it yet remains for some enterprising
town to be able to advertise itself as a "speckless town" as well as a
"spotless town."
AN EXPERT'S OPINION
In a recent important bulletin issued by the Bureau of Entomology, Dr.
L.O. Howard discusses the economic importance of several of the insects
that carry disease. I wish to quote two or three paragraphs from the
pages in which he discusses the house-fly or typhoid fly to show the
opinion of this excellent authority in regard to this pest.
"Even if the typhoid or house fly were a creature difficult to
destroy, the general failure on the part of communities to make any
efforts whatever to reduce its numbers could properly be termed
criminal neglect; but since, as will be shown, it is comparatively
an easy matter to do away with the plague of flies, this neglect
becomes an evidence of ignorance or of a carelessness in regard to
disease-producing filth which to the informed mind constitutes a
serious blot on civilized methods of life."
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Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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