392 SANITARY ENTOMOLOGY 



DISEASES OF THE PLANT KINGDOM TRANSMITTED BY BUGS 



Thallophyta: Fimgi: Bacteriaceae 



Bacillus leprae Hanson, the cause of LEPROSY, has been considerably 

 experimented upon with a view to determining the possibihty of bedbug 

 transmission. Carmichael, in 1899, suggested the possible connection 

 between bedbugs and leprosy. Long, in 1911, conducted experiments. 

 He allowed two bedbugs to bite lepers, in the neighborhood of leprous 

 nodules, and then examined the alimentary canal of the bugs and found 

 them to contain the bacilli. He cites in one of his papers the case of a 

 certain man who slept in a hut formerly occupied by a leper. He was 

 bitten by bugs while sleeping there and later developed the disease. Skel- 

 ton and Parham think transmission by bedbugs in Zanzibar to be im- 

 probable. Thomson has conducted a few experiments with this organism, 

 and Smith, Lynch, and Rivas have also published an article on the trans- 

 missibility of the leper bacillus by the bedbug. Ehlers found the leprosy 

 bacillus in the digestive tract of bedbugs in the West Indies in 1909 (see 

 Cumston 1918). Sanders in South Africa found the bacillus in 20 out 

 of 75 bugs fed, when starved, on leprous patients. The bacilli occurred in 

 the proboscis up to the fifth day, in the digestive tube to the sixteenth 

 day, and also in the feces. Goodhue also found the lepra bacillus in bugs 

 which have bitten leprous patients. It still is incumbent upon some one 

 to attempt the transmission of the leper bacillus by inoculation of feces 

 of the bedbug in skin abrasions. It would appear that scratching after a 

 bite would be the logical means of inoculating the disease. 



Bacillus pestis Kitasato, the cause of BUBONIC PLAGUE, has been 

 experimented on by a number of authors to determine the possibility of 

 transmission by bedbugs. Vubitski conducted certain experiments which 

 are reviewed by Manning. Cornwall and Menon have also written on 

 the possibility of transmission of plague by bedbugs. 



Cumston (1918) reviews the literature, but signally fails to grasp the 

 significance of the records he quotes. Like most other investigators he 

 was looking primarily for evidence of transmission by bite. Jordansky 

 and Klodnitzky succeeded in inoculating mice with plague by having them 

 bitten by infected bedbugs. They found large numbers of plague bacilli 

 in the digestive tube of one bedbug and a few in another on the 36th day 

 after they had bitten a pestiferous mouse. Nuttall and Wierzbitzky also 

 found the bacillus in the digestive tube. In India Walker found 22% of 

 the bugs in huts of natives infected with plague, to be infected with the 

 bacillus. He also transmitted the plague to a rat by a bug -which had 

 bitten a pestiferous patient. 



