REGULAR SANITATION 65 



reducible mortality. Almost all towns in warm climates 

 have excessive infant and adult death-rates. This is 

 always due to unnecessary disease and is only due to 

 atmospheric temperature indirectly ; the heat favours 

 insanitation, and this causes the heavy death-toll. But 

 as stated before, flies are a sign of insanitation and 

 their numbers a measure of that insanitation. Even 

 London the capital of the most sanitary country in 

 the world has periodical outbreaks of disease which 

 might be prevented. During the abnormally hot 

 summer of 1911 there was a heavy loss of infant life in 

 London, and the cause was the same as that which did 

 so much damage in Cairo two years before and as it had 

 done some three thousand years before. In London 

 during the week ending July 29, 1911, the infant 

 mortality rose from 173 to 303 per 1,000 infants born, 

 and later this death-rate rose further to 636. There 

 was a great increase of flies and fly-borne disease, and 

 this was the result. But what a pity ! We are con- 

 stantly hearing complaints of our falling birth-rate, yet 

 we calmly allow the children already born to die 

 unnecessarily. It seems so paradoxical in the light of 

 our present knowledge. In London, of course, the 

 high death-rate was confined to the poorer and dirtier 

 quarters, for in the better residential neighbourhoods 

 the fly-breeding places have almost disappeared. In 

 the West End the horse is going and he is taking his 

 flies with him. King Petrol has come, and he has 

 replaced the horse by a reciprocating engine and the 

 stables have become garages. As a result, in richer 

 London the death-rate increases but slightly during the 

 heat-waves. But in the slums, the stables, the manure, 

 the refuse remain, and so do the flies, and there death 

 takes his unnecessary toll. 



