116 THE HOUSE FLY— DISEASE CARRIER 



stated that no doubt typhoid fever and camp diarrhea 

 are frequently communicated to soldiers in camp 

 through the agency of flies which swarm about fecal 

 matter and directly convey infectious material attached 

 to their feet or contained in their excreta to the food 

 which is exposed while being prepared at the common 

 kitchen or while being served in the mess tent. These 

 directions from the Surgeon-General, however, were 

 ignored, with the result that the world got its first 

 large-scale and convincing demonstration of the car- 

 riage of typhoid by flies, although the laboratory 

 method was not used in this demonstration. 



Inferential Proof 



One of the volunteer surgeons. Dr. M. A. Veeder, 

 who had already been interested in the subject, wrote 

 articles before the close of 1898 calling attention to 

 observations upon flies traveling back and forth between 

 the latrines and the cooking tents in concentration 

 camps in the Southern United States, and concluded 

 that the conveyance of typhoid infection in the man- 

 ner indicated ''is the chief factor in decimating the 

 army.'' Before Veeder 's articles had been published, 

 typhoid was rampant in many of the concentration 

 camps, and an army typhoid commission was appointed 

 in August of that year, consisting of Drs. Walter Reed, 

 U. S. A. ; Victor M. Vaughan, U. S. V. ; and E. O. 

 Shakespeare, U. S. V. These men were all of high 

 scientific standing, the chairman being the now fa- 

 mous discoverer of the true etiology of yellow fever. 



