CHAPTER XXII 



The Control of Human Lice ^ 

 W. Dwiffht Pierce and R. H. Hutchison 



Never in the history of the world has the subject of insect-borne 

 diseases become so prominent as it has since the discovery that several 

 of the great diseases which ravage nations and armies are borne by 

 lice, and that personal prophylaxis alone will combat these diseases. 



The knowledge of the means of conveyance of a disease is the first 

 requisite for the successful preventive measures. Had the scientists not 

 known how typhus fever was spread the entire nation of Serbia, and pos- 

 sibly most of the peoples of eastern Europe and the poor peoples of all 

 the war-stricken nations as well as the men in the trenches might have 

 been wiped out by now. As a matter of fact, probably one- third of the 

 Serbian nation and hundreds of thousands of Roumanians, Austrians, 

 Russians, Germans, and Turks were lost before the medical authorities 

 obtained the necessary grip on the situation. The lice would have gone 

 on disabling the men in western trenches with trench fever if they had not 

 been proven to be the vectors. 



THE EAVAGES OF LICE 



The eastern theatre of war has long been scourged with louse-borne 

 epidemics. During the Crimean war the British troops became seriously 

 infested, becoming anaemiated and debilitated and death carried off many 

 of them. The only remedy available was to put the wet flannels in the 

 snow for two days — this killing all but the nits (Shipley). 



Typhus fever ravaged the Bulgarian troops during the two Balkan 

 wars to such an extent that it was estimated by a staff officer that they 

 lost more soldiers in a short period of time from fleck typhus than from 

 all other diseases combined. 



During the present war, the lice at first were most serious in the 

 eastern theatre, probably due to the greater congestion of population 

 among the Slavic peoples. The Germans first had to combat them among 

 the Russian prisoners, finding the French almost completely free. But 



' This lecture is a modification of one read June 24 and distributed June 27 and of a 

 synopsis presented September 18 and distributed October 4, 1918. 



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