10 DDT— Killer of Killers 



city rats and then to the human population? Will plague 

 sweep this country as it did Europe in the 14th century? 

 We don't know the answers yet. But if the worst does 

 come, we will have only ourselves to blame. Unlike the 

 inhabitants of medieval Europe, we know how plague is 

 spread. We can't pass it off as an act of God. We know 

 that we must beware of the flea. He's an ugly looking beast, 

 and his bite is worse than his appearance. 



Lice, Fever, and Death 



Next to bubonic plague, the most dreaded of European 

 pestilences is typhus, also known as ship fever, camp fever, 

 jail fever, and spotted fever. Traditionally, this is the disease 

 that for centuries has followed in the wake of armies. World 

 War II was no exception, but thanks to DDT, vaccines, and 

 the greater cleanliness of modern armies, typhus for the first 

 time in history was brought under control. 



As was the case with bubonic plague, hundreds of years 

 elapsed before man found out how typhus was spread. It 

 was not until 1909, when Charles Nicolle discovered that 

 typhus is transmitted from man to man by lice, that the mys- 

 tery was stripped from this disease and men learned that 

 there was more to body cleanliness than merely the elimina- 

 tion of body odor. People who change to clean clothing 

 once a week won't harbor body lice, and if these individuals 

 take a bath before putting on their fresh garments, so much 

 the better. But only a small percentage of the world's pop- 

 ulation can boast of a standard of living so high that it per- 

 mits of a change of garments and a bath tub. When people 

 are crowded together in concentration camps or in city slums, 

 when homeless, underfed refugees drag their weary bodies 



