26 LOSS THROUGH INSECTS THAT CARRY DISEASE. 
extent. Box privies should be abolished in every community. The 
depositing of excrement in the open within town or city limits should 
be considered a punishable misdemeanor in communities which have 
not already such regulations, and it should be enforced more.rigor- 
ously in town- in which it is already a rule. Such offenses are gener- 
ally committed after dark, and it is often difficult or even impossible 
to trace the offender; therefore, the regulation should be carried even 
further and require the first responsible person who notices the de- 
posit to immediately inform the police, so that it may be removed or 
covered up. Dead animals are SO reported; but human excrement Lfi 
much more dangerous. Boards of health in all communities should 
look after the proper treatment or disposal of horse manure, primarily 
in order to reduce the number of house flies to a minimum, and all 
regulations regarding the disposal of garbage and foul matter should 
be made more stringent and should be more stringenth 7 enforced." 
In the opening sentence of the paragraph just quoted attention was 
called to the activity of bacilli in excreta passed by individuals after 
apparent recovery from typhoid. Since the paper in question was 
published, more especial attention has been drawn by medical men 
to this point, and it has been shown that individuals who are chronic 
spreaders of the typhoid germs are much more abundant than was 
formerly supposed. Dr. George A. Soper recently discovered a strik- 
ing case of this kind in the person of a cook employed successively 
by several families in the vicinity of Xew York City, with the result 
that several cases of typhoid occurred in each of these families. In 
a paper by Doctor Davids and Professor Walker, read before the 
Royal Sanitary Institute of London during the present season, the 
history was given of four personal carriers of typhoid who had com- 
municated the disease to a number of people. These four carriers 
were detected in one city within a few months, and from this fad 
it can be argued with justice that such cases are comparatively numer- 
ous. This being true, the presence of unguarded miscellaneous 
human excreta deposited in city suburbs, in vacant lots, and in low 
alleyways intensifies to a very marked degree the danger that the food 
will become contaminated with typhoid bacilli by means of the ty- 
phoid or house fly. It is known, too. that the urine of persons who 
have suffered from typhoid fever often contains active typhoid bacilli 
for several weeks after the patients have recovered ; consequently this 
also is a source of danger. 
The importance of the typhoid fly as a carrier of the disease in army 
camps, as shown in the Spanish war and in the Boer war and in the 
camps of great armies of laborers engaged in gigantic enterprises like 
the digging of the Panama canal, i- obvious, but what has just been 
stated indicates that even under city conditions the influence of this 
fly in the spread of this disease has been greatly underestimated. It 
is not claimed that under city conditions the house fly becomes by this 
argument a prime factor in the transfer of the disease, but it must 
obviously take a much higher relative rank among typhoid conveyers 
