CHAPTER IV 



THE House Fly not only carries the microbes of various 

 diseases on its feet, legs and body, but it actually carries 

 them inside of its body. Flies feed greedily on the most 

 loathsome of substances the more filthy the food the more 

 does the fly relish it. It will abandon the choicest of foods 

 usually found on a lunch table for the slops of a sick cham- 

 ber, the contents of a garbage box, a rotting carcase, or 

 for sputa spat out into the gutter by diseased persons. 



At a single meal a fly will swallow nearly half its own 

 weight of food, which is rapidly digested. The House Fly 

 is a glutton, eating at frequent intervals during the day- 

 light hours. 



When a fly makes a meal of some form of liquid filth, such 

 as pus coughed up by a person suffering from consumption, 

 bronchitis, influenza, &c., the disease microbes, which are 

 swarming in it, are also swallowed. These disease microbes 

 are not killed by the gastric juices of the fly. They pass 

 through the body unchanged. This is a very important 

 truth to bear in mind as important, or more so, than the 

 fact that flies carry the microbes of deadly diseases upon 

 their feet, legs, and body. 



Fly specks are the excreta of flies. The fly being a glut- 

 tonous feeder, these specks are, in consequence, deposited 

 at alarmingly frequent intervals. The portions of the 

 filth swallowed by the fly which are good for food are acted 



