CHAPTER XL
MISCELLANEOUS
The Dangerous House Fly—Diseases Transmitted by Flies—Homes Should be Carefully Screened and Protected—The Breeding Places of Flies—Special Care Should be Given to Stables, Privy Vaults, Garbage, Vacant Lots, Foodstuffs, Water Fronts, Drains—Precautions to be Observed—How to Kill Flies—Moths—What Physicians are Doing—Radium—X-Ray Treatment and X-Ray Diagnosis—Aseptic Surgery—New Anesthetics—Vaccine in Typhoid Fever—"606"—Transplanting the Organs of Dead Men into the Living—Bacteria that Make Soil Barren or Productive—Anti-meningitis Serum—A Serum for Malaria in Sight.
THE DANGEROUS HOUSE FLY
Mothers should become thoroughly acquainted with the grave consequences which may result from fly-infected foods, and from the possible carriage of disease by means of flies, even where foods are carefully protected. The transmission of the following diseases by means of flies has been conclusively proven: typhoid fever, tuberculosis, cholera, Oriental plague, inflammation of the eyelids, serious infection of wounds. Summer diarrhea of children is also transmitted in this way.
Typhoid fever and summer diarrhea of children in this country, and cholera and Oriental plague in the countries in which those diseases exist, may be transmitted through the various foods that are eaten in an uncooked state, if infected by flies, through cooked foods infected by flies after the process of cooking, through drinking water which has been infected by flies, and through milk similarly infected. Fruits are especially likely to be infected by the small fruit fly commonly found around markets and stands. Fish may be infected by flies, and in consequence will undergo rapid decomposition. Decomposition caused in this way has resulted in many cases of diarrhea and dysentery. What is commonly known as fly speck is the excreta of the fly, and frequently contains virulent disease germs. These specks are often found on foodstuffs that have not been properly protected.
Transmission of disease may also occur by the infection of open wounds through contact with infected flies. This is true of all pus formation in wounds. The simple contact of a fly infected with the disease may cause Oriental plague, sore eyes, and possibly granular eyelids. A fly infected with dysentery or typhoid fever may cause either of these diseases by simply coming in contact with the lips of susceptible persons.
The fly in the house should be relentlessly pursued and destroyed. The house which is carefully screened and protected from flies is infinitely safer than one not so protected. In the spring of the year the house fly begins to take on life. Eggs which were laid the preceding fall begin to hatch. At first the fly is only a little worm wriggling in some pile of filth. The eggs are usually laid and the grub developed in a manure pile or some mass of garbage or other filth. Before the grub develops into the fly it is easily destroyed. If everything in and about the house were kept scrupulously clean, and if every manure pile were kept carefully screened or covered so as to protect it from flies, there would be no difficulty in preventing the fly nuisance. The most effective way to accomplish this is to destroy the breeding places. The importance of this may be seen when it is considered that one fly produces one hundred and twenty-five millions or more of its kind in one season.
Stables.—Manure is by far the commonest material in which the fly lays her eggs. All stables should be kept scrupulously clean. No manure should be allowed to accumulate where it will be exposed to flies for even a few minutes. Immediately after it is dropped by an animal, it should be removed and covered. Manure may be treated with considerable quantities of lime without interfering with its fertilizing value, and in this way the development of the eggs laid in it by the flies can be practically prevented. The floors of stables should be thoroughly flushed with water at least once in every twenty-four hours.