30 Xi:\V YORK STATE MUSEUM 



thuse responsible for tyi)lioid fever. The monthly bulletin of the 

 New York State Department of Health for October 1908, states 

 that during- 1907 there were in New York State 37,370 deaths of 

 infants under 2 years of age, 9213 being due to diarrhoea and 

 enteritis. Careful investigators, it is stated, have placed the pro- 

 portion of deaths between bottle-fed and breast-fed babies as 25 

 to I. Physicians recognize the necessity of providing pure milk 

 for young children, and in most instances it is comparatively easy 

 to see how flies might be responsible for the major portion of the 

 infections, since they usually occur in numbers about stables, in 

 the vicinity of milk houses, in the neighborhood of milk stations, 

 on milk wagons and, in fact, are found in greater or less numbers 

 wherever milk is stored, excepting in refrigerators and similar 

 places. Martin states that each succeeding year confirms his ob- 

 servation of 1898 to the effect that the annual epidemic of diarrhoea 

 and typhoid is connected with the appearance of the common house 

 fi\ . while Nash, in the Lancet, records no mortality from diarrhoea 

 among infants at Southend during July and August 1902, this 

 immunity being accompanied by the almost complete absence of 

 the house fly. This insect was abundant in that locality in Sep- 

 tember and coincidently epidemic diarrhoea developed. Sandi- 

 lands, in the Journal of Hygiene, states that the great majority of 

 cases of diarrhoea arc due to the consumption of infected food, 

 and suggests that the seasonal incidence of diarrhoea coincides 

 with and results from the seasonal prevalence of flies. Dr Jackson 

 records several epidemics of a malignant type of dysentery radi- 

 ating from a single point and disappearing entirely when proper 

 disinfection of closets was enforced. 



The evil possibilities of the fly are by no means exhausted in the 

 above recital. It is well known that flies feed upon sputum. Ex- 

 periments by Lord recorded in the Boston Medical and Surgical 

 Journal show that flies may ingest tubercular sputum and excrete 

 tubercular bacilli, the virulence of which may last for at least 15 

 days. He considers the danger of human infection from this 

 source to lie in the ingestion of fly specks on food, and suggests 

 that during the fly season great attention should be paid to the 

 screening of rooms and hospital wards containing patients with 

 tuberculosis and laboratories where tubercular material is ex- 

 amined. 



Nuttall considers that the evidence previously submitted proves 

 tliat the house fly may carry about and deposit anthrax bacilli, 



