78 THE HOUSE FLY 



However, after long and patient research by various 

 noble men of science, it fell to Professor M. J. Rosenau, 

 of the Harvard Medical School, to complete the final chain 

 of proof. This occurred in the year 1912. In this con- 

 nection we cannot do better than quote from the American 

 Museum Journal for May 1913 as follows : 



"No one who was present at the joint session of 

 Sections I and V of the Fifteenth International Congress 

 of Hygiene and Demography on September 26th last will 

 forget that most striking event of the whole Congress, 

 the presentation of these results. Eminent investigators 

 from Norway, Sweden and Austria, as well as some of 

 the leading workers in this country, had presented the 

 formal papers of the morning. Much that was important 

 was added, but the weight of evidence still seemed to 

 point, though somewhat doubtfully, towards human con- 

 tact as the chief agent in the transmission of the disease. 

 In the discussion that followed, Dr. Rosenau made a 

 preliminary report of his experiments, and announced that 

 he had succeeded in producing Poliomyelitis (infant 

 paralysis) in six out of twelve monkeys bitten by Stable 

 Flies (Stomoxys calcitrans) which had been allowed to feed 

 on other monkeys suffering from the disease. As a result 

 of his discovery the entire outlook for the control of infant 

 paralysis has been changed." 



Professor Rosenau 's work has since been confirmed by 

 Drs. Anderson and Frost of the United States Public 

 Health Service. There is, of course, no certainty that 

 the disease is always transmitted by this particular 

 species of Blood-sucking Fly, but it is well established 

 that this fly is the principal disseminator of the disease, 



