“The application is best made with a large-sized atomizer, one holding a pint or more and working with a piston instead of a rubber bulb. * * * To obtain the best results, repeat the treatment after about two weeks. We have tried this mixture repeatedly and with uniformly gratifying results. Usually one application, if thoroughly made, put a period to the complaints, about eight to ten ounces being required in an average sleeping room. The odor remains some little time in a room, but is not disagreeable to the average person.

“This remedy can be readily prepared by a pharmacist in any drug store.”

“Various bedbug remedies and mixtures are for sale, most of them containing one or another of the ingredients mentioned, and these are frequently of value. The great desideratum, however, in a case of this kind, is a daily inspection of beds and bedding, particularly the seams and tufting of mattresses, and of all crevices and locations about the premises where these vermin may have gone for concealment. A vigorous campaign should, in the course of a week or so at the outside, result in the extermination of this very obnoxious and embarrassing pest.”

“Temperature control.—The possibility of temperature control is indicated in the discussion elsewhere of the effect of temperature on this insect. A temperature maintained below freezing for 10 or 15 days destroys the eggs, and this temperature continued for 15 days to a month will destroy the newly hatched young. It may be, therefore, that if infested houses in cold climates should be opened up and allowed to remain at a temperature well below freezing for a considerable period, all eggs and the young, and possibly most if not all of the adults, would be exterminated. This method of control might perhaps be practicable at least in the case of summer houses in the North which are left untenanted in the winter.

“The maintaining of high temperatures may be an even more efficient method of control. The activity of the bedbug is at its greatest between 60° and 70° to 75°. As indicated elsewhere, in a temperature of 96° to 100° F., accompanied with a high degree of humidity, newly hatched bedbugs perish within a few days, and, if this temperature is raised to 113° F., in a few minutes.[4] A temperature of 113° will also destroy the eggs, and with these higher temperatures the item of humidity is not apparently important.”

[4] Editorial note.—An account of successful use of live steam to eradicate bedbugs in bunkhouses, as practiced by a lumber company in Oregon, was published in Public Health Reports, Nov. 28, 1919, pp. 2713–2714. In that instance steam pipes were tapped, after closing all doors and windows, and a temperature of 160° F. was held for approximately 3 hours. The officials of the company stated that 2 months after the steaming no signs of bedbugs had been found.

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