200 INSECTS 



disease. It remained for the United States, during its 

 war with Spain, to demonstrate with equal positiveness 

 that typhoid and other enteric fevers could be carried 

 in the same way. More soldiers killed by common 

 house flies than by Spanish bullets, is the unenviable 

 record, and the most unsafe places for our soldiers were 

 the fly-infested home camps where open latrines and 

 near-by mess tents furnished ideal conditions — for the 

 flies and the diseases. 



Fig. 91 



-The house fly, Musca domestical larva with details at right, puparium 

 at left. 



While flies are not the only carriers of enteric disease 

 germs and these do not actually depend upon insects as 

 their sole means of spread, yet the habits and structures 

 of flies are peculiarly adapted for effective service of this 

 nature and they are correspondingly dangerous. No 

 other insects live in such close communion with man, and 

 so much are they regarded as a matter of course that 

 their companionship at our table arouses no fear; and 

 such is their persistence that they gain admittance to 

 the palace of royalty, as well as the hovel of the peasant. 

 They breed in all sorts of decaying and excrementitious 

 matter, in garbage pails and even in neglected corners of 



