142 THE HOUSE FLY— DISEASE CARRIER 



they happen to be.* The writer has shown that the 

 typhoid fly oviposits upon such individual dejecta and 

 that its larvae successfully breed in them, and that the 

 adult flies of the next generation issue from them un- 

 der the ordinary summer moisture conditions that pre- 

 vail in Washington. f With the now well-known per- 

 centage of chronic typhoid carriers (from three to four 

 per cent.) and with the hundreds of cases of typhoid 

 that have occurred annually in the city of Washington 

 during the past ten years, and with the existence as ac- 

 tually observed of such loose and ill-placed dejecta, 

 and with flies feeding upon them and breeding in them 

 within short distances from unprotected kitchens and 

 pantries, to say nothing of markets and food shops, 

 how is it possible that flies should be factors of no great 

 moment ? Surely there must be scores of typhoid car- 

 riers living in Washington to-day. 



Moreover, there still exists in portions of even the 

 cleanly city of Washington the uncared-for box-privy 

 nuisance. The judgment in this case is not hasty. It 



*This occurs in every city. Newstead in his Liverpool (Eng- 

 land) report writes: "In the course of my investigations, more 

 especially on hot days, numbers of house flies were seen hovering 

 over or feeding on such matter [human droppings]. The feces 

 were generally those of children, and were lying, as a rule, a few 

 feet from the doorways, in the courts or in the passages behind 

 the houses. In one instance no less than five patches of human 

 excreta were lying in one court, and all of them were attended 

 by house flies." 



fThe exact records of these experiments and rearings will be 

 found in the writer's 1900 paper. The especial cases in point are 

 mentioned on p. 572, as many as thirty-one house flies being 

 reared from a single dropping of a child. We have elsewhere 

 mentioned Major Faichnie's record of the rearing of 500 flies 

 from a single dropping. 



