OUR BABIES

Waikato Times, Volume 94, Issue 14768, 6 October 1921, Page 3

OUR BABIES

;By Hygeia). The House Fly, T)7 Woo'ls Hutchinson's remarks with regard to the menace of the common fly to life and health, recall the interesting illustrated lecture, delivered by Or Champtaloup. Professor of Bacteriology. Otago University, at the Annua! Meeting- of the Dunedin Branch of the Society, nine years ago. As the fly season is approaching, and as the havoc wrought by the insects i? so great and widespread, we think it well to emphasise the matter by reprinting the newspaper summary of the lecture. A Dangerous Neighbour: The Common House Fly. Dr S. T. Chamberlain. Professor of r«iblie Health and Bacteriology, delivered a most informative and arresting lecture, which he had entitled, "A Dangerous Neighbour: The House Fly." It was profusely illustrated by excellent lantern views; and if the lecturer's desire was to make this insect an object of horror and loath frig he was certainly entirely successful. There were many interesting' problems in preventive medicine, he said, at which both the laboratory worker and the medical officer of health were working, and one of the most important of these was the question of carriage of infection from place t.o place or from man to man by means of insects, animals or man himself. Man himself, though often unaware of it, might harbour typhoid and diphtheria bacilli, and so infect his relatives and friends, though he himself he perfectly well. Cats, fowls, and dogs all play their part — the latter especially in relation to the disease of hydatids. The House Fly a Carrier of Many Diseases. The common house fly did not restrict its attentions to a single disease, but might be the means of spreading typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis, dysentery, infantile diarrhoea, and parnsatic and other diseases. If. as he hoped to show, the house fly (Musca domestics) could transmit, all these diseases, by settling on and dabbling in all sorts of filth, it would earn the name of a dangerous neighbour.'' which bad been given it by Pr Prudden. As that observer remarked :

It is not among lions and tigers and reptiles that w have to look for man's most destructive animal enemy. These mostly stay at home and mind their own business, and if an unwary man now and then suffers from them it is an even chance that it is his own fault; but the house fly wander about and gets its obectionable person onto or into almost everything. It breeds chiefly in manure or garbage heaps. It revels in almost all those things which to the normal modern man seem dirty, filthy, and disgusting. Then it wanders over the food and bodies of men, women and children whenever opportunity offers. This is had enough, but the worst of it is that the bacteria which are swarming in most of the stuff it eats and dabbles its body and feet in are alive, and when it feeds on infective material, which it does at every opportunity, these disease bacteria may be carried direct and in full virulence to the food and persons of the well. In his subsequent remarks there mizhl be unsavoury particulars, but he had endeavoured to gloss them over as far as possible, and to avoid anything mere sensational than was needed to give a true picture of the part the fly played in its relation to man. Development and Rapid Reproduction of Flies. The first slides shown were designed to illustrate the egg, larvae, and ehrvsallis stages. The lecturer explained that the cycle from the laying of the eggs to the perfect insect took 10 to 14 days under favourable conditions, but at a low temperature it might take several weeks. It had been estimated that 1200 flies would issue from a pound of horse manure, and that a pair of tlics mating in spring might be progenitors of 191 thousand billion (lies by late summer. Various investigators had established the fact that Hies do not wander of themselves far from Lheir breeding places, so that the presence of these insects in any number indicate the proxmity of undesirable matter in which they can breed. Birds and fowls were useful in keepim-- down the fly, not only by at.lacking the insect itself, but through thej,- fondness for Hie larvae which abounded in refuse heaps. ■ Dr Ghamptaloup's address will be continued next week.