Live Stock. 



454 



[November, 1908. 



bovine and human tubercle bacilli. 

 They were the same organism — modified 

 simply by change of host, the bovine 

 being gradually transformed into the 

 human in and by its human environ- 

 ment. The bearing of this was that 

 they must have greatly increased 

 stringency in supervision. The danger 

 attending; the consumption of the milk 

 of tuberculous cows was being illustrated 

 daily by striking example. The sum- 

 mary slaughter of animals proved to be 

 infected should enable us to stamp out 

 bovine tuberculosis in a comparatively 

 short time, and thus to cut oft' the main 

 source of human infection. On all hands 

 the signs were favourable for the 

 subjugation of this disease, for new 

 methods of treatment were securing a 

 greatly increased rate of recovery in 

 those who had actually contracted it. 



PERILS IN THE HOUSE, 



Fortunately, in this country they ran 

 practically no risks from suctorial 

 insects injecting disease-causing or- 

 ganisms, but they had insects that in- 

 directly and mechanically smuggled 

 disease about. The common house-fly 

 had been alleged to be implicated in 

 this flagitious traffic. Six years ago, 

 when addressing them at Middlesbrough 

 he denounced Musca domestioa, and 

 expressed his belief that it was a disease- 

 carrier, and although some medical 

 officers of health and others were still 

 sceptical on the point, the evidence that 

 had since then accumulated seemed to 

 leave no doubt about it. Dr. Jackson, 

 of New York, had found as many as 

 100,000 fa?cal bacteria on the legs, body 

 and mouth of one fly, and had shown 

 that in that city there was an exact 

 correspondence between the prevalence 

 of flies and the mortality from diarrhceal 

 diseases. "This so-called innocent insect." 

 said Dr. Jackson, "is one of the chief 

 sources of that infection which, in New 

 York City, causes annually about 650 

 deaths from typhoid fever and about 

 7,000 deaths from other intestinal 

 diseases." 



Professor Nuttall had shown that flies 

 were 



CAPABLE OF CARRYING THE PLAGUE 

 BACILLUS. 



Celli had established that they could 

 carry tubercle bacilli. Many other ob- 

 servers had found adhering to their ap- 

 pendages pathogenic bacteria of several 

 different sorts. Could it be questioned 

 that they could pick up from typhoid 

 eases the bacillus typhosus, and carry 

 it to the milk-jug where it would find 

 a suitable culture medium ? Could it be 



questioned that in their summer Sittings 

 to and fro they were instrumental in 

 spiriting about and landing in milk or 

 in sugar, or on cake or other comesti- 

 bles, the specific cause of summer 

 diarrhoea, the bane of the babies, which 

 was not yet identified, but was assuredly 

 one or more micro-organisms ? 



Liverpool was again to the front in 

 this matter. The City Council made a 

 grant to the School of Tropical Medicine 

 to investigate the fly problem further, 

 and had now taken action in accordance 

 with the recommendations of the school, 

 and was clearing away the breeding 

 places of the fly. Already this wise policy 

 had borne good fruit in a notable reduc- 

 tion of the amount of summer diarrhoea. 

 The local Government Board had just 

 taken up the matter, and its President 

 had, with his usual clear sanitary 

 insight, appointed a Departmental Com- 

 mittee to inquire into the part played 

 by flies in the spread of disease. No 

 scientific jury with the evidence at this 

 moment available before it would hesi- 

 tate to find the fiy guilty as a carrier 

 of disease. Lives were at stake, and 

 they could not be too prompt in going 

 to the rescue. 



FIGHT WITH THE HOUSE-FLY. 



The fly was a danger signal. Where - 

 ever flies congregated there must be dirt 

 about. Even if the fly should be proved 

 to be grossly maligned, the removal of 

 that dirt must be advantageous. The 

 practical proceedings which a study of 

 the fly's life history suggested were 

 the removal of all horse manure and, 

 similar products as speedily as possible 

 and certainly within eight days, the 

 time occupied by the development of 

 the fly, the substitution of water car- 

 riage for the older methods where that 

 practicable, the frequent clearance and 

 cleansing of streets and courts, the 

 employment of destructors of sufficient 

 capacity to deal with house refuse as it 

 was collected, the re-constitution of the 

 domestic larder which should be made 

 flyproof, and kept as scrupulously clean 

 as the operating theatre of a hospital. 

 They would, perhaps, have refrigerating 

 larders one of these days. 



No doubt the fight with the fly would 

 be a stiff one. One fly, it had been cal- 

 culated, would lay 1,000 eggs, and might, 

 on the snowball principle, have 

 25,000,000 descendants in a season. It 

 was only by systematic attacks on the 

 breeding places that they could hope to 

 rout this multitudinous disease-carrier. 



OTHER DISEASE CARRIERS. 



But, besides insects, many other ani- 

 mals were disease-carriers, Oysters and 



