Fig. 48—Barn-yard filled with manure. Millions of flies were breeding here and infesting all the near-by houses.
Fig. 49—Dirty stalls; the manure had not been removed for some days and the floor was covered with maggots.
Of course it is impossible for them to issue from this filth without more or less of it clinging to their bodies. Now if these flies would breed only in barn-yard manure and fly directly from the stable to the house there would be comparatively little reason to complain, at least from a sanitary standpoint, for the amount of barn-yard filth that they carried to our food would be of little consequence. But when they breed in privy vaults or similar places, or visit such places before coming into the house or dairy or market place the results may be much more serious.
FLIES AND TYPHOID
It has been abundantly demonstrated that the excrement or the urine of a typhoid patient may contain virulent germs for some time before he is aware that he has the disease, and it has been shown that the germs may be present for weeks or months, and in some cases even years after the patient has recovered. If a fly breeds in such infected material, or feeds or walks on it, it is very apt to get some of the germs on its body where they may retain their virulence for some time, and should it visit our food while covered with these germs some of them would probably be left there where they might produce serious results. More than that. If the fly should feed on such infected material the typhoid germs would go on developing in the intestine of the fly and would be passed out with the feces in which they retain their virulence for some days. In other words, the too familiar "fly-specks" are not only disgusting, but may be a very grave source of danger. It will be seen that in this way several members of a community might become infected with the typhoid germs before anyone was aware that there was a case of typhoid or a "bacillus carrier" in the neighborhood.
One more example out of the scores that might be cited to show how the fly may carry typhoid germs. They may enter the sick chamber in the home or in the hospital and there gain access to the typhoid germs. These they may carry to other parts of the house or to near-by houses, or the flies may light on passing carriages or cars and be carried perhaps for miles before they enter another house and contaminate the food there.
These are hypothetical cases, but they illustrate what is taking place hundreds of times every season all over the world wherever typhoid fever and flies occur, and no country or race is known to be immune from typhoid, and the fly is found "wherever man is found."