116 THE HOUSE FLY—DISEASE CARRIER 
stated that no doubt typhoid fever and camp diarrhea 
are frequently communicated to soldiers in camp 
through the agency of flies which swarm about fecal 
matter and directly convey infectious material attached 
to their feet or contained in their excreta to the food 
which is exposed while being prepared at the common 
kitchen or while being served in the mess tent. These 
directions from the Surgeon-General, however, were 
ignored, with the result that the world got its first 
large-scale and convincing demonstration of the car¬ 
riage of typhoid by flies, although the laboratory 
method was not used in this demonstration. 
Inferential Proof 
One of the volunteer surgeons, Dr. M. A. Veeder, 
who had already been interested in the subject, wrote 
articles before the close of 1898 calling attention to 
observations upon flies traveling back and forth between 
the latrines and the cooking tents in concentration 
camps in the Southern United States, and concluded 
that the conveyance of typhoid infection in the man¬ 
ner indicated “is the chief factor in decimating the 
army.” Before Veeder’s articles had been published, 
typhoid was rampant in many of the concentration 
camps, and an army typhoid commission was appointed 
in August of that year, consisting of Drs. Walter Reed, 
U. S. A.; Victor M. Vaughan, U. S. V.; and E. O. 
Shakespeare, U. S. V. These men were all of high 
scientific standing, the chairman being the now fa¬ 
mous discoverer of the true etiology of yellow fever. 
