474 . SMITHSONIAN MISCELLANEOUS COLLECTIONS VOL.84 



eggs on anything except fresh horse manure. Nevertheless, rearings 

 in this substance were carried out during the summer, and the first 

 rather full account of the species, since Packard, was published. Not 

 content with this, however, further rearings were made during the 

 following years, and experiments were made in the control of house- 

 fly breeding in stables, since it had become our conviction that the 

 horse stables, then so exceedingly numerous in cities, furnished the 

 principal house-fly supply. While kerosene and chlorid of lime were 

 found to be effective, especially prepared receptacles for manure 

 attached to stables were found to be equally effective, and were recom- 

 mended in Bulletin 10 (1898). 



It is interesting to note that in the 1896 bulletin, with the idea in 

 mind that horse manure was by far the principal breeding place, the 

 prediction was made that with the " lessening of the numbers of 

 horses and horse stables consequent upon electric street railways and 

 bicycles, and probably horseless carriages," the time would come when 

 house flies would cease to be a nuisance. It will be remembered that 

 the horseless carriage at that time was an extremely rare object. 



While suggestions as to the carriage of disease by the house fly 

 had been made at intervals for very many years, it was not until the 

 short war between the United States and Spain, in 1898, that the 

 prevalence of typhoid fever in concentration camps brought about the 

 appointment of an Army typhoid commission which concluded that 

 flies undoubtedly serve as carriers of the infection. This conclusion 

 intensified interest in the house fly. Further experiments had shown 

 that, under certain conditions, this insect will breed in a variety of 

 fermenting organic material, including human excreta, and the con- 

 stant possibility of infection of food supplies by contaminated house 

 flies was obvious. I therefore planned an elaborate series of experi- 

 ments which resulted in the publication in December, 1900, of a 

 lengthy article entitled "A Contribution to the Study of the Insect 

 Fauna of Human Excrement [With Especial Reference to the Spread 

 of Typhoid Fever by Flies]" — Proceedings, Washington Academy 

 of Sciences, Volume 2, pp. 541-604, 21 text figures, 2 plates. 



In the years following 1900, the house fly as a disease spreader 

 received an enormous notoriety. Newspapers and other publications 

 contained many articles on the subject. Women's clubs and other 

 citizens' organizations in a gradually increasing number of towns and 

 cities and health officials here and there took up the question seriously 

 until it became evident that in the United States a very general 

 crusade against the insect was under way. 



