Further preliminary reports on flies as carriers of infection.

Date:
1909
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Further preliminary reports on flies as carriers of infection. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    20/46 (page 18)
    The body of evidence here presented as to the part played by hies in the dissemination of cholera appears to us quite convincing.* DIARRHCEA IN INFANTS. The relation of flies to the spread of summer diarrhoea has aroused special interest of recent years. Fraser (1902), referring to epidemic diarrhoea in Portsmouth, states that “ on visiting the houses in question I find that in all, almost without exception, the occupants have suffered from a perfect plague of flies. They told me every article of food is covered at once with flies.” .... “ I repeat that to this, and this alone, I attribute the diarrhoea in the Goldsmith Avenue district.” Nash (1903, p. 128) pointed out that there were 23 cases of the disease in Southend-on-Sea in 1901, whilst there were none in the summer of 1902. M. domestica was completely absent in the wet summer of 1902, but appeared in September of the same year; coincident therewith there occurred 13 cases of infantile diarrhoea. Nash (1904) considers that M. domestica is the chief carrier of diarrhoea-causing bacteria. Newshoeme (1903, p. 21) has expressed the opinion that food in the houses of the poor can scarcely escape faecal infection. “ The sugar used in sweetening milk is often black with flies, which may have come from a neighbouring dust-bin or manure heap, or from the liquid stools of a dlarrhoeal patient in a neighbouring house. Flies have to be picked out of the half-empty can of con- densed milk before its remaining contents can be used for the next meal.” Newsholme considers the greater prevalence of diarrhoea among infants fed on Nestle’s milk as due to the fact that flies are more attracted to it than to ordinary cow’s milk because of its sweetness. Cope.MAN (1906, p. 18) in a report to the Local Government Board dealing with endemic prevalence of infantile diarrhoea at Wigan says :—“ At the Miry Lane Depot there is always stored (awaiting removal by farmers) an enormous amount of nightsoil mixed with ashes which, in hot weather especially, is not only exceedingly offensive, but is beset by myriads of house-flies. As the result of personal enquiry at the various houses in the neighbourhood in which, during the year 1905, deaths from diarrhoea had occurred, I learnt that considerable nuisance from the foul odours was apt to be experienced during the prevalence of hot weather, especially with the wind in the south or south-west, i.e., blowing from the Depot to the special area, so much so on occasions as to render it necessary to shut all the windows, while the inhabitants of houses ® SiBTHOKPE (1896) claimed that the flies fulfil the office of scavengers, i destroying rather than conveying the poison of cholera. He relates that an j, outbreak of cholera occurred in a native regiment in India under his command. f On each occasion of their leaving and occupying a new camp, a recrudescence of l the disease occurred. He attributes this to the flies having been left behind. j Francis (1893) cites the case of a woman he saw at Nusserabad in 1846, who developed cholera a few minutes after swallowing a fly and died the same evening. The title of this comoaunication reads (!) “Cholera caused by a fly ? ’