332 THE SECRET OF A TERRIBLE DISEASE 



(outside and inside), from his clothing, from the water he 

 drinks, from the food he eats, from the air he breathes, 

 and from the surfaces with which he necessarily comes 

 into contact, of injurious parasites and hurtful living things 

 which lurk in dirt and rubbish. At first the larger and 

 mofe obvious hurtful creatures — snakes, rats, mice, scor- 

 pions, blowflies — were eliminated by some elementary 

 attempts at removal of rubbish and kitchen middens. 

 Then ticks (which African savages stitl do not trouble 

 to remove from their bodies) and later fleas and bugs 

 became unpopular ; lice were long regarded as inevitable, 

 and even beneficial, and by some populations and by parts 

 of the most civilised at the present day, are still, not 

 merely tolerated, but favoured. In a country school in 

 France a child who was found to be afflicted in this way 

 was the daughter of the local medical practitioner. She 

 remarked, " Oh ! Ce n'est rien ; papa dit que c'est la sant6 

 des enfants" 1 Parasitic worms of various kinds, though 

 they often cause disease and death, are accepted and 

 tolerated even by the most refined and luxurious, who risk 

 infection rather than submit to the precaution of abstention 

 from raw vegetables and fruits, or to the expenditure of 

 trouble in cleansing those nests of infective germs. It is 

 only within the last thirty or forty years that such cleanli- 

 ness of body and of clothing and of house-fittings as will 

 banish parasitic insects has become at all general. The 

 common house-fly is still tolerated, although it is a 

 notorious carrier of dirt and disease, and is bred by dirt 

 and dirt only, its eggs being hatched in old stable manure. 

 The diminution of late years of house-flies in London 

 houses is simply and solely due to legislation compelling 

 the removal of horse manure from the " mews " so frequent 

 at the back of London streets. Egyptian natives still 

 allow flies to gather on their eyelids without protest. 

 Of the bacteria and similar microscopic germs of 



