HOUSE FLIES AND DISEASE 345 



typhoid fever into the human food to which he has free 

 access after his previous visits to open latrines. The 

 house-fly is himself a product of dirt and neglect. The 

 eggs are laid in old manure heaps and kitchen middens, 

 and the maggots, which eventually are transformed into 

 flies, nourish themselves in those accumulations. When 

 this refuse is rapidly and regularly removed by the care 

 of the sanitary officials of a town, the flies diminish in 

 number, as they have diminished in London within the 

 last thirty years. We no longer are overrun by flies in 

 London in the summer months. The man selling sheets 

 of sticky paper is no longer heard in our streets calling 

 " Catch 'em alive, oh ! " But in country places, where a 

 neglected stable-yard is near the dining-room of the inn, 

 house-flies are as great a nuisance and danger as ever. 

 There is no difficulty, if the simplest rules of cleanliness 

 are observed, in abolishing them altogether from human 

 association, but combined and simultaneous action against 

 them is an essential condition of success. 



