314 SANITARY ENTOMOLOGY 



American peons, the European peasants, the Mohammedan populations 

 of Africa and Asia. Among the Mohammedans, their religion forbids 

 killing insects and from childhood they become inured to their attack. 

 War serves to aggravate conditions by concentrating refugees and pris- 

 oners in crowded, unhygienic zones, and by mixing troops from all stations 

 of life and from all races. Among our own people, lumber camps, min- 

 ing communities, jails, poorhouses, lodging houses, construction camps, 

 ghettos, negro communities, Mexican colonies, Indian reservations, tramps, 

 and vagabonds are the principal reservoirs of infection which infect our 

 armies and the civil population. Ignorant, degraded people everywhere 

 are sources of lice. Our public schools, where children from all strata of 

 society mingle, furnish constant trouble as distributing centers of head 

 lice, as the children's hats and clothing hanging on racks afford easy 

 means of spreading the vermin. Infection from lice may occur as just 

 mentioned in clothes racks, public transportation, public halls, public 

 toilets, hotels and lodging houses, and by coming in direct contact with 

 lousy individuals. 



CONTROL MEASURES 



Out of conditions as described above have arisen heroic methods of 

 treatment. When things are done in armies they must be done on a large 

 scale. Consequently we find that Dr. Strong's commission began 

 to educate the Serbian nation on the necessity of bathing and cleansing 

 the wearing apparel, and similar efforts were later made in Roumania. 

 And furthermore, with the cleansing came the control of the epidemics. 



The British in 1915 began isolating German prisoners for 14 days 

 after capture, for observation, and they treated or destroyed their 

 clothing and bathed them as promptly as possible. The isolation of 

 prisoners was later practiced quite generally. 



It has become a well-defined principle now that new acquisitions to a 

 military camp must be treated for lice. This treatment is called de- 

 lousing or disinsection. Men returning from the trenches, prisoners of 

 war, men who have been on furlough, new recruits, and new units must 

 be inspected and given a complete delousing treatment on general prin- 

 ciples. This treatment often varies in detail but consists of thorough 

 bathing, cleansing of the clothes and accoutrements, and disinfection 

 of bedding and baggage. 



On the Mexican border the United States Public Health Service has 

 found it necessary to exercise a rigid supervision over refugees from 

 Mexico, as the disturbed political conditions in that country have re- 

 sulted in a spreading of typhus fever from the plateau regions, where it 

 is endemic, to all parts of the country. The immigrants are stripped and 

 given identification tags for their clothing and baggage, and then they 



