The Pestiferous House-Fly.

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume IV, Issue 140, 30 May 1914, Page 3 (Supplement)

The Pestiferous House-Fly.

In a paper read at the Society of Arts, London, Mr. Edward Ross gave, in most useful form, an account of the part which the common house-fly plays in carrying disease. The importance of this subject is as yet hardly appreciated in England. The fly does not sting, and consequently people are apt to assume that it is a harmless insect. But just »s malaria was tracked down to the mosquito through the splendid investigations of Sir Ronald Ross, so. more recently, it has been demonstrated that the common house-fly is the medium for conveying a form of typhoid fever. Young children are the principal sufferers, and when flies are plentiful children die by the thousand. In Cairo in 1909 there was a plague of flies, and 3.000 children died from enteritis in two months. To destroy theso disease-bearing insects it is imperative to attack their breeding places, for ihe few hundreds or thousands that can bo killed by any available methods count as nothing in comparison with the millions that can bo produced by one mother. Wo have, in fact, to do in tho matter of flies what lias already been so successfully done in dealing with mosquitoes. Places like Ismailia, which used to be satuiated with malaria, have been rendered unite healthy by draining or filling up the swamps and pools where tho mosquitoes used to breed. In the same way. if stable manure and all kinds of rotting garbage are carefully cleared away the flies will disappear, because they will have nowhere to breed. This work ought not to bo left to the local sanitary authorities; each individual should co-operate so far as opportunity serves, and help to relie.’n the eommunir - of the most fruitful cause of a deadly disease.