THE HORRIBLE HOUSE FLY.

King Country Chronicle, Volume V, Issue 401, 4 October 1911, Page 7

THE HORRIBLE HOUSE FLY.

The Medical Congress has concluded its sittings, and if there is one thing more than another that claims our attention it is the unanimity with which the medical fraternity condemn the house fly as a carrier of disease. When we take the trouble to watch this little pest one cannot help being struck with the impartial manner in which he distributes his attentions. He climbs cheerfully into the sugar bowl and when shoo'ed from there will fly through the window and crawl over a pile of manure, [jay a casual call on the butcher, crawl over a choice joint of meat, then wing his irresponsible flight toward a piece of meat in the refuse box, and the further decomposed it is the better it suits his palate. After paying a few other casual calls in which he does not forget the privy he finally finishes up with a fatal bath in the milk jug, satisfied that he has accomplished something in his short life, if it is only to sow the seed for one case of typhoid with the sporting chance that the one case may cause an epidemic. The above is not a fanciful sketch of a house fly's itinerary. It is a simple, indisputable fact. Therefore the fly must die to increase our own chances of living. He has been tried, found guilty and condemned to death, and we are not concerned with how he dies, so long he dies effectually. Like his friend the rat, the fly loves insanitary conditions. Therefore keep your surroundings clean. It loves refuse and offal, and deposits its eggs therein therefore see that all waste food, refuse and offal are kept tightly covered. Flies do not like kerosene, it being injurious to their health therefore a little kerosene used judiciously will act as a deterrent. But above all, .fruit shops, dining rooms, boarding houses, butcher shops and other businesses dealing with food supplies should be provided with proper receptacles to keep their refuse in, so that it may not be accessible to flies or rats. If people will attend to these matters as they should there would be less preventible disease in our midst.