ENTOMOLOGICAL NEWS. 



Philadelphia, Pa., November, 1914. 



Sanitation in Vera Cruz, Mexico. 



Statements have been recently received from Vera Cruz 

 which show considerable improvement in the general health 

 of the community there. There was a marked reduction in 

 the civil death-rates per thousand of population, per annum. 

 During June and July, 1913, the mortality was 39.55, and dur- 

 ing the same months this year the mortality was 32.29. Dur- 

 ing the latter period there were 161 deaths from communicable 

 diseases. What concerns us most in this report, is that in 

 large part, these diseases may be transmitted by insects. 

 Those known to be thus conveyed, entirely or in part, are 

 malaria, typhoid fever, dysentery, tuberculosis and enteritis. 

 The statement has been made that mosquito-breeding has been 

 largely suppressed and that twenty-five miles of ditches have 

 been dug and miles of vacant lots and hundreds of acres of 

 swamps drained. Dysenteries and diarrhoeas have been 

 brought under control and foodstuffs protected from flies by 

 appropriate screening. 



The significant fact is that the work has been properly and 

 efficiently done and the result apparent. By contrast let us 

 look at the conditions in places not in Mexico. Perhaps in the 

 majority of large cities in the United States these conditions 

 are the same as in Philadelphia, where many kinds of food are 

 exposed to street dirt and insects, particularly house-flies. We 

 have laws against the exposure of food sulistances to flies and 

 street dirt and dust, but the lawyers tell us the laws can't be 

 enforced. The writer of this statement sees, each day, basket- 

 fuls of fruit, to be retailed, exposed on the sidewalk, dusted 

 off with a filthy brush, and large quantities of apples, polished 

 with a dirty rag. 



The brush removes enough dcssicated horse-manure and 

 dried tubercular sputum to render the fruit less unsightly and 

 the rag removes most of the fly-excrement from the apples. 

 The brushings are needed several times a day, particularly dur- 

 ing dry weather, when clouds of street filth are wafted into 

 the air. 



It is a curious attitude toward things, that in Cuba, Mexico 

 and Panama preventive medicine has reached a high degree of 

 efficiency, while in most municipal governments in the United 

 States it is at a very low ebb. — H. S. 



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