The bedbug

Transcriber’s Note: New original cover art included with this eBook is granted to the public domain.
TREASURY DEPARTMENT UNITED STATES PUBLIC HEALTH SERVICE HUGH S. CUMMING, Surgeon General
ITS RELATION TO PUBLIC HEALTH, ITS HABITS AND LIFE HISTORY, AND METHODS OF CONTROL
REPRINT No. 626
FROM THE
PUBLIC HEALTH REPORTS
WASHINGTON GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1924

Its Relation to Public Health, its Habits and Life History, and Methods of Control.
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.
In actual practice these conditions would be found only in the most filthy and insanitary surroundings and would call for drastic measures to exterminate all vermin. It is, of course, possible that under unsettled conditions where sick and well are crowded together with no facilities for cleanliness, bedbugs might act as transmitters of septicemic diseases. Experience has shown that under such grossly insanitary conditions such insects as fleas and lice appear to be and are far more dangerous as carriers of disease. Special measures for their extermination should be taken. Added precautions for the examination of bedbugs under these conditions would probably not be justified by the results.