OETHOPTEBA AFFECTING MAN CAUDELL. 509 



There are few Orthoptera recorded as the direct cause of disease 

 in man. In 1872 tliere was published in Philadelphia an eight- 

 paged pamphlet which reads like a production of pre-Plinyan days.^ 

 The writer contends that locusts and grasshoppers are the prime 

 cause of the eruptive diseases of living things. He proves his asser- 

 tions by biblical quotations and qualifies as a learned scientist by 

 various interesting statements, such as that house flies originate 

 from the intestinal worms of man, A more recent charge against 

 Orthoptera as a direct cause of disease in man was brought to the 

 attention of this society a year ago by Doctor Howard. This was a 

 letter from a corres^Dondent who drank a bottle of soda water and 

 found a decayed roach in the bottom which he considered the cause of 

 Bright's disease, a malady with which he was soon afterwards stricken. 

 Wliile the instances cited above involve elements liable to just criti- 

 cism, there are others which are at least plausible and some doubt- 

 lessly well founded. Thus literature records several cases where 

 grasshoppers, during great invasions, fell into the sea to be later cast 

 ashore in such immense numbers that the air was polluted by the 

 decaying mass, resulting in pestilential conditions costing the lives 

 of many people. Also in times of grasshopper invasions the insectr^, 

 befoul the roofs of houses with their excrement and the rain water 

 drained into cisterns from such roofs is defiled^ and dysentery 

 results from mechanical irritation by particles contained in such pol- 

 luted water.^ 



However few or doubtful the records of Orthoptera directly causing 

 disease in mankind, their instrumentality in the dissemination of dis- 

 ease organisms is a matter well worth consideration. Their impor- 

 tance in this respect is, of course, slight as compared with some other 

 groujDS, especially the Diptera, and this phase of the subject is insig- 

 nificant as compared with the general subject of medical entomology. 

 But that certain Orthoptera, especially the Blattidae, may yet prove 

 of real importance as disseminators of disease is not to be doubted. 

 That they are well qualified for playing such parts is certain. Many 

 published articles show cockroaches to be veritable hotbeds of various 

 kinds of germs and that they fairly teem with bacterial organisms 

 both inside and out.* Their eggs are covered with bacteria when de- 

 posited ^' and their feces show micrococci in abundance." They may 

 carry the hypopus stage of the cheese mite '' and common cosmopoli- 



^ Riley, W. D., Locusts and Grasshoppers. The beginning and the end of the febrile 

 or eruptive diseases in living things. 



2 Bull. Bur. Ent. U. S. Dept. Agric, No. 22, p. 106 (1900). 



^Prout, Journ. Trop. Med. and Hygiene, p. 137-139 (1908). 



■» Ilerms and Nelson, Amer. Journ. Tub. Health, vol. 3, p. 229 (1913) ; Sartory and 

 Clerc, C. R. Soc. Biol., vol. 64, p. 545 (1908), and Barber, Philippine Journ. Sci., vol. 7, 

 p. 521-524 (1912). 



= Petri, Mem. d R. Stazione di Paid. Vegetale, Rome (1909). 



«Xorthrup, Tech. Bull. Mich. Exp. Stat, No. 18, p. 25 (1914). 



'Ealand, Ins. and Man., p. 244 (1915). 



