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nier d'Albe. / K V . . • - - fC/ /Q 



DISCUSSION AND 00RRESp6nDENCE 

 EARLIER REFERENCES TO THE RELATION OF FLIES 

 TO DISEASE 



In the last number of Science (January 

 7) there is an interesting note by Dr. E. W. 

 Gudger on Edward Bancroft's reference, in 

 1769, to the belief that flies transmit the trop- 

 ical disease known as " yaws." It is not gen- 

 erally known that as early as the sixteenth 

 century there was definitely prom,ulgated the 

 theory that flies play a role in the transmis- 

 sion of the plague. 



Dr. Josiah Nott, 1849, lists Athanasius 

 Kircher as among the earlier writers who be- 

 lieved that insects served as transmitters of 

 disease. Dr. Kelly, in his fascinating volume 

 "Walter Eeed and Yellow Eever," goes 

 further and quotes from Kircher's " Scru- 

 tinium Physico-medicum," published at Eome 

 in 1658, the remarkable statement : 



There can be no doubt that flies feod on the 

 internal secretions of the diseased and dying, tlien 

 flying away, they deposit their excretions on the 

 food in neighboring dwellings, and persons who 

 eat it are thus infected.' 



Unfortunately, Dr. Kelly's translation stops 

 'Apropos of the present-day belief that blood- 

 sucking and stinging insects may occasionally be 

 direct inoculators of disease germs, the following 

 statement from the same work is of interest: 

 "In a recent plague at Naples, while a certain 

 nobleman was looking out a window a hornet flew 

 in and lighted on his nose and stinging him with 

 the sharp point of its proboscis, caused a swelling. 

 And when the poison had gradually spread and 

 crept into the vital organs, within a space of two 

 days (without doubt from the contagious humours 

 which the insect had sucked up from a corpse), 

 he contracted the disease and died." 



