32 The Bulletin. 



An altogether vegetable diet is too bulky and an exclusively animal food 

 is too concentrated. Strength and energy are very different things, and a 

 vegetarian may be strong, but still lacking in the energy that animal proteid 

 gives. The vegetable-eating races of the world have never been the prominent 

 ones. 



In short, a mixed diet is best for human beings and the best physical health 

 is maintained only when we have enough and to spare of a well-balanced diet. 



THE DANGER OF THE HOUSE-FLY. 



By MISS JOSEPHINE SCOTT. 



Just as soon as the farmer finds that some pest is destroying or damaging 

 his crops, he begins at once to try some means of destroying that pest. He 

 makes this attempt because he can see with his own eyes that his crop will 

 be cut short or even destroyed if the destroyer is allowed to go on unchecked. 

 When it comes to some danger, the result of which cannot be seen, we often 

 let it alone, simply because we cannot see the damage done. You remember 

 that for a long time it was not known that malaria is contracted only through 

 the bite of a certain kind of mosquito. When this fact was established, then 

 we began to study about the mosquito, which were malarial and which were 

 harmless, and the conditions under which the malarial kind breed. It has 

 been proved, also, that yellow fever is not contracted by contact with yellow- 

 fever patients, neither is it carried in clothing; but that a mosquito which 

 abounds in yellow-fever regions conveys it by its bite. 



The danger of the common house-fly to mankind was unsuspected until 

 about twenty years ago. Later, during the Spanish War, it was clearly shown 

 that the cause of the jspread of the typhoid fever, which killed so many of our 

 men, was due to flies. This insect is so active in the spread of typhoid fever 

 that it is often spoken of as the "typhoid fly." The fly is responsible for dis- 

 eases which can be spread by the taking in of. germs with food or drink. 

 Some of these germs are dysentery, cholera, typhoid fever and tuberculosis. 

 During the Civil War there was an outbreak of gangrene among some of the 

 wounded in a hospital. The physicians used, as they thought, all precautions 

 to prevent its spread, but they were not effectual. In recent years it is known 

 that this gangrene was spread by the flies, they lighting upon the sore, getting 

 its poison upon their feet, then flying to the wound of another patient, there to 

 deposit the germs from the gangrenous patient. 



The head of a fly is covered with stiff bristles like a head of ripened wheat ; 

 the foot ends in a pair of pincers, the mouth and head being rough. When 

 you push a stiff-bristled broom in a pile of refuse and then lift it, some of 

 the dirt comes too. That is just the way the fly does; when it leaves the 

 refuse, some filth sticks to its body. Set the broom down, and the dirt shakes 

 off. Just so with the fly, when it walks about a trail of filth is left behind. 

 Perhaps some one in your vicinity has typhoid fever or some intestinal trouble. 

 The patient's excreta is not properly disinfected. Flies visit these discharges, 

 get the germs on their bodies, fly at once to your kitchen or dining-room, crawl 

 over your food or fall in the milk, leaving behind them the germ of disease. 

 Then you may wonder how the disease was contracted. Is it any wonder? 



In Chicago 19 out of every 100 babies die from diseases carried by flies. In 

 the congested districts of Manhattan Island 65 out of every 100 deaths of 

 babies were caused in the same way. This was the proportion for the four 

 hot months of 1906, from intestinal trouble. Most of baby's "second summer 

 complaint" is carried by flies. Haven't you seen baby asleep with his little 

 mouth open, and dozens of flies crawling into it, over his face and into his 

 nose? Those very flies that are buzzing so busily around your baby may have 



