BEWARE OF HOUSE-FLIES!

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LII, Issue 173, 14 August 1909, Page 3

BEWARE OF HOUSE-FLIES!

THEY CARRY AND BREED MANY DISEASES. ' Too much importance cannot be attached to this household matter, which is having the careful attention of the Local Government Board (Kays a Home paper). Lost year Jlr. John Burns ordered an investigation into the question of flics as carriers of infection, and some alarming evils have been made public. ( Regarded hitherto as practically harmless, the common house-fly is being proved to be as deadly to human beings as the tactse-fly is to cattle and horses, and the mosquito to those who live in parts of the world where malaria and yellow lever are rampant. To young children especially the housefly Is a menace to health. A fly in the milk is such a common occurrence that ■Jitlle notice i« taken of it, but mothers and fathers should bear in mind thai that fly may have contaminated the milk to such an extent as to cause acute uliarrhoeu in any child who d/inks it. Experts'are agreed that flies are largely responsible for infantile diarrhoea, and frequently cause an epidemic.

Parents, therefore, who wish to safeguard the health of their children should ; not neglect to keep the milk covered with line mesh in order to prevent flies from getting into it. Furthermore, a war should be waged against household flies in order that the danger of other food being taiuted with fly-blows may be minimised as far as possible. That typhoid fever has not infre quently been carried from place to place ,by the agency of flies has been demonstrated over and over agaisi, and will admit of no denial. Flies live and breed in the most fetid atmosphere. They thrive on all sorts of waste and rubbish, and from these carry bacteria of infectious diseas'es.

Beware of th,e. ordinary house-flies, therefore, during the sninraer. They constitute a pest which should he exterminated as far as possible, and all available precautions taken against thciu,