104 PROC. EXT. SOC. WASH., VOL. 20, XO. 5, MAY, 1918 



learn how long the adult fly can retain these bacteria and through 

 how many generations it can carry them to clean uninfected food, 

 assuming that the bacteria are deposited on this food by the fly 

 in oviposition and taken up by the larvae later. Probably such a 

 study would throw considerable light on the epidemiology of 

 certain diseases. 



One question I have long wanted solved is whether Stomoxys 

 calcitrans can take up the meningococcus from sputum or excreta 

 as adult or larvae, and whether it can in any way transmit this by 

 its bite or its excreta. In the summer of 1912 there was a severe 

 outbreak of equine cerebrospinal meningitis from Texas and 

 Louisiana to Kansas and eastward to New Jersey. Practically 

 contemporary with this epidemic there was an unusual outbreak 

 of Stomoxys calcitrans, causing the death of many horses. This 

 outbreak subsided in the fall, -but coincident with its subsidence 

 was the beginning of p, great wave of human cerebrospinal menir- 

 gitis which swept from Texas northward and eastward. What 

 connection has Stomoxys to meningitis? It has been claimed that 

 it can carry poleomyelitis, a similar disease. The matter should 

 be looked into thoroughly. 



It would be an excellent idea if the bacteriologists of all the army 

 camps would make bacterial studies of the flies caught around the 

 barracks and hospitals, using the technique for examination of the 

 intestinal bacteria worked out by Ledingham, and Bacot, and 

 other writers. This should be done especially in case of the out- 

 break of certain bacterial diseases in the army. 



Finally, I wish to call attention to a remark made by Mr. Good- 

 win at the December meeting in Pittsburg when he stated that 

 the urates secreted by insects breeding in grain cause symptoms of 

 disease in dogs fed on the grain cooked into cakes. Mr. Good- 

 win's experiments are not detailed sufficiently, to indicate whether 

 he was dealing with a nutritional disease or an actual poisoning by 

 insect secretions. It will not do to leave the matter untouched 

 now that he has opened it up. We must know positively the 

 effect of insect pollution of grain upon the human system as well 

 as upon animals. There is a bare possibility that such studies 

 will throw new light on certain nutritional diseases which are at 

 present unexplained, such as beriberi, avian polyneuritis, pellagra, 

 etc. As far as I can find those investigators who have studied 

 these diseases from the standpoint of injured food products have 

 looked for fungous diseases following the insect attack and have 

 not attempted to find the effect of the fecal or other secretions of 

 the insects themselves, upon the system. . Whether there is any- 

 thing in it or not, the studies must now be made. In fact we have 

 plenty of evidence that many diseases originate with the intro- 

 duction into the body cutaneously or orally, of infected insect feces. 



