. Preventive medicine and hygiene. ly. These observa-tions were subsequently verified and extended by Simonds, Offelman,McEae, and others. It is now quite evident that flies lighting upon a case of smallpox,measles, scarlet fever, and other exanthematous disease may very readilytransmit these infections to another person. I have actually seen mag-gots breeding in the open lesions of a case of smallpox treated in theopen air at Eagle Pass, Texas. Flies may, in the same mechanical way, transmit the infection oferysipelas, anthrax, glanders, and other skin infections. It is knownthat flies may in
. Preventive medicine and hygiene. ly. These observa-tions were subsequently verified and extended by Simonds, Offelman,McEae, and others. It is now quite evident that flies lighting upon a case of smallpox,measles, scarlet fever, and other exanthematous disease may very readilytransmit these infections to another person. I have actually seen mag-gots breeding in the open lesions of a case of smallpox treated in theopen air at Eagle Pass, Texas. Flies may, in the same mechanical way, transmit the infection oferysipelas, anthrax, glanders, and other skin infections. It is knownthat flies may ingest tuberculous sputum and excrete tubercle bacilliwhich may remain virulent as long as 15 days. Flies have also beenassociated with leprosy and many other diseases. Esten and Mason ^ counted the bacterial population of 415 flies andfound that the number of bacteria on a single fly may range all theway from 550 to 6,600,000. Early in the fly season the numbers of^ Stores Agricultural Experiment Station, Bull. No. 51, Aprils Fig. 35.—The Little House Fly {Homalomyiacanicularis 6). (Hewitt.) FLIES 253 bacteria on flies are comparatively small, while later the numbers arevery large. The places where flies live also determine largely the num-ber of bacteria they carry. The average of the 415 flies was about oneand one-quarter million bacteria. The method of the experiment wasto introduce the flies into a sterile bottle and pour into the bottle aknown quantity of sterilized water, then shake the bottle to wash thebacteria from the body of the fly. The numbers, therefore, only repre-sent those carried on the outside and not those in the intestinal experiments of Esten and Mason were designed to simulate thenumber of microorganisms that would come from a fly in falling intomilk. Torrey ^ found that a single fly may carry from 570 to 4,400,000bacteria upon its surface, and from 16,000 to 28,000,000 in its intes-tinal tract. The prevailing types are Streptococcus equ
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Keywords: ., bookauthorwh, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, booksubjecthygiene
