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
"(5) The numbers of plague microbes in the infected fleas and bugs
increase during the first few days.
"(6) The fæces of infected fleas and bugs contain virulent plague
microbes as long as they persist in the alimentary canal of these
insects.
"(7) Animals could not be infected by the bites of fleas and bugs
which had been infected by animals whose own infection had been
occasioned by a culture of small virulence, notwithstanding the
fact that the insects may be found to contain abundant plague
microbes.
"(8) Fleas and bugs that have fed upon animals which have been
infected by cultures of high virulence convey infection by means of
bites, and the more certainly so the more virulent the culture with
which the first animal was inoculated.
"(9) The local inflammatory reaction in animals which have died
from plague occasioned by the bites of infected insects is either
very slight or absent. In the latter case it is only by the
situation of the primary bubo that one can approximately identify
the area through which the plague infection entered the organism.
"(10) Infected fleas communicate the disease to healthy animals for
three days after infection. Infected bugs have the power of doing
so for five days.
"(11) It was not found possible for more than two animals to be
infected by the bites of the same bugs.
"(12) The crushing of infected bugs in situ during the process of
biting, occasioned in the majority of cases the infection of the
healthy animal with plague.
"(13) The injury to the skin occasioned by the bite of bugs or
fleas offers a channel through which the plague microbes can easily
enter the body and occasion death from plague.
"(14) Crushed infected bugs and fleas and their fæces, like other
plague material, can infect through the small punctures of the skin
caused by the bites of bugs and fleas, but only for a short time
after the infliction of these bites.
"(15) In the case of linen and other fabrics soiled by crushing
infected fleas and bugs on them, or by the fæces of these insects
the plague microbes can under favorable conditions remain alive and
virulent during more than five months.
"(16) Chemical disinfectants do not in the ordinary course of
application kill plague microbes in infected fleas and bugs.
"(17) The rat flea _Typhlopsylla musculi_ does not bite human
beings.
"(18) Human fleas do bite rats.
"(19) Fleas found on dogs and cats bite both human beings and rats.
"(20) Human fleas and fleas found on cats and dogs can live on rats
as casual parasites, and therefore can under certain conditions
play a part in the transmission of plague from rats to human
beings, and vice versa."
RESULTS OF VARIOUS INVESTIGATIONS
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