94 DDT — Killer of Killers 



vive several good shampooings, and you can comb and brush 

 his hair all you want, but some of the lice and nits will es- 

 cape your most persistent exertions. 



Before we tell you what to do, we feel that you should 

 know that the head louse looks just about the same as the 

 body louse. In fact, the head louse and the body louse are 

 so similar that they can interbreed and raise families of lively 

 hybrids. However, you know he is a head louse because he 

 is found on the head. It's as simple as all that! But if you 

 find a louse on your body he may be either a body louse or a 

 crab louse, as you shall learn in a little while. 



Is the head louse just a nuisance, or is he, like his brother 

 the body louse, a carrier of disease? For a number of years 

 the finger has been pointed at the body louse — "There's the 

 carrier of typhus!" All right, he is! But that doesn't mean 

 that he is the only carrier. One would certainly suppose 

 from the similarity between the body louse and the head louse 

 that the latter might also be guilty. And he is! It has been 

 shown under experimental conditions that the head louse can 

 transmit typhus, and there is plenty of reason to believe that 

 he does this under natural conditions. 



After all, the body louse is merely a development of 

 the head louse. Primitive races who wear little or no cloth- 

 ing have no body lice. Yet, long before they first started to 

 wear clothes, our naked ancestors had an abundant supply of 

 lice on their heads. With the advent of clothing, some ad- 

 venturous members of the head louse family migrated down- 

 ward and established themselves in this new environment. 



Just when typhus first appeared on the earth will never 

 be known, for it was undoubtedly long before recorded his- 

 tory. However, because of the absence of body lice in these 

 very early days, it seems likely that head lice were busy 



