

AMERICAN MOUSECOM-GUIDE LEAFLETS 

The head- and body-lice, as has been indicated, are the agents 
in the transmission of typhus fever and are probably active in the 
spread of European relapsing fever as well, while the body-louse 
is believed to play a part in the transmission of the special form of 
relapsing fever which occurs in northern Africa. Bed-bugs (Cimex) 
and assassin-bugs (Conorhinus) are probably the agents in dissemi- 
nating Opilacao or Chagas fever in Brazil and Kala-azar or dum- 
dum fever in India and China. 
Of the trypanosome diseases, the most important are the cattle 
disease of South Africa, Nagana, carried by Glossina morsitans, and 
the sleeping sickness of man. It is estimated that between 1900 and 
1910 there were 200,000 deaths from sleeping sickness in the Uganda 
Protectorate alone. The particular trypanosome which causes this 
malady is carried by another biting fly, Glossina palpalis, which lives 
in rather sharply limited areas of dense forest and undergrowth 
along the shores of lakes or rivers. Clearing the jungle for a hundred 
yards along the water courses and for three hundred yards about all 
villages, screening of houses, protection of the body against bites, and 
the isolation of the sick are among the most important preventive 
measures in use against this disease. Surra, a cattle disease of Asia, 
Malaysia, and the Philippines, somewhat similar to Nagana, is a try- 
panosome disease spread by various blood-sucking flies, while sand 
flies (Phlebotomus) carry the unknown germs of the Pappatici fever 
of the Mediterranean and Verruga in Peru. The suspicion that 
epidemic anterior poliomyelitis (infant paralysis) and pellagra are 
causally connected with biting flies (Stomoxys, Simulium) has, on the 
other hand, not been substantiated. 
Among the mosquitoes, besides the various species of Anopheles, 
which carry the germs of malaria, and the Aedes, which transmits 
yellow fever, Culex fatigans spreads the virus of Dengue fever, and 
with other mosquitoes is the agent in transmitting the microscopic 
worms (Fi/aria) which cause elephantiasis and other forms of filariasis. 
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