The medical entomology of Salonica /by Andrew Balfour.

  • Andrew Balfour
Date:
[1916?]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The medical entomology of Salonica /by Andrew Balfour. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Our Canadian friends call this fly, with good reason, the Typhoid Fly, but it might just as well be termed the Paratyphoid Fly, or the Dysentery Fly, or the Cholera Fly, or the Helminth Fly, or possibly even the P.U.O. Fly, though the evidence before us at present does not point in this direction. Now the house fly, though useful enough as a scavenger, speedily becomes a nuisance and a danger when it invades the habitations or camps of man. It is onévon es the most fecund of animals. Just think what a single female Sie Ey Pee EI On can accomplish! She lays 120 a, egg; b. larva; c. pupa; d. empty puparium eggs in one batch, and during the year she may lay four such batches. Taking only one batch, let us say that half the flies that hatch out, 1.e. 60, are females. Provided the progeny of these 60 females and that of succeeding generations all reach maturity, a state of things which, let us thank God, never occurs, the original mother fly would in six months become the ancestress of no less than 5,598,720,000,000 adult flies. Consider what this means, and, if your arithmetical knowledge suffices, make the calculation for all four batches. You may be able to do so, but no human mind can adequately picture the result. This is one reason why delay in fly preventive measures is fatal. It is not, however, a reason for sitting with folded hands and saying that fly prevention is a hopeless task. Fly extermination is hopeless. Fly prevention within certain limits is not only possible but essential. Now all these flies come from eggs. Where are these eggs laid? In filth of some sort or other, and usually in local filth. By the flies of their own breeding ye shall know the dirty and the careless unit. In this country there are two main sources ot flies —the one, Human Excrement, and the other, Horse Manure. -I have not been here long enough to say which is the more common at present, but, as the summer heat increases, I believe the former will infallibly prove to be the chief source of flies. In any case, it is, of course, the more dangerous. Apart from any question of faulty military sanitation, we must remember that just as the wind bloweth
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