TREASURY DEPARTMENT UNITED STATES PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE HUGH S. CUMMING, Surgeon General THE BEDBUG ITS RELATION TO PUBLIC HEALTH, ITS HABITS AND LIFE HISTORY, AND METHODS OF CONTROL REPRINT No. 626 FROM THE PUBLIC HEALTH REPORTS December 10, 1920 (Pages 2964–2970) [Revised edition, 1924] [Illustration] WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1924 THE BEDBUG.[1] Its Relation to Public Health, its Habits and Life History, and Methods of Control. [1] Reprint from the Public Health Reports, vol. 35, No. 50, December 10, 1920, pp. 2964–2970. The bedbug is one of the numerous insects which have been suspected of conveying disease to man. Compared with such insect pests as mosquitoes, lice, and fleas, however, its rôle is decidedly a minor one. It has been claimed that the bedbug can take up the microparasites of European relapsing fever, plague, and possibly leprosy, along with the blood of men or animals suffering from these diseases. It is also possible that in rare instances the bedbug may transmit plague or European relapsing fever to man. On the other hand, there is no convincing evidence that the bedbug is the usual and ordinary insect transmitter of these or any other diseases at present known to us. If the bedbug acts as a transmitter of disease, it apparently does so by the accidental carriage of disease elements on the mouth parts; but this occurs only under the most favorable conditions. These would require, first, the presence of great numbers of microparasites on the skin or in the blood of a man or animal sick with some disease transmissible to man by subcutaneous inoculation; second, it would probably be necessary that there should be many bugs biting in order that one or more of them should bite some healthy person within a rather short space of time after these insects had fed on the infected individual.