A PLAN TO EXTERMINATE THE TYPHOID OR FIFTH-DISEASE FLY
Hodge, C. F.
A Plan to Exterminate the Typhoid or Filth---Disease Fly By C. F. HODGE AS LONG AS the fly was known merely as an annoying nuisance there was little chance of enlisting concerted effort for its...
...In recent years our success in dealing with mosquitoes by attention to their breeding places has suggested a similar solution of the fly problem...
...There would occur such an uplift in health and cleanly living as the people had never experienced...
...The fly breeds chiefly in stable manure but will breed also in almost any decaying filth, animal or vegetable, and only ten days are required for eggs to hatch and mature...
...It is that a fly seeks its food entirely by smell and will crawl in to it through any dark crack...
...Mosquitoes breed in stagnant water, and it its generally easy to drain, fill, stock with fishes or oil the pools of a neighborhood and relieve it completely of the mosquito nuisance...
...The flies as they hatch, will swarm to this window, and by the usual guide-strips we may lead them to an opening near the top—into a trap...
...It is quite possible some such poisoning method, employed generally out of doors would prove the cheapest and easiest way of dealing with the whole fly problem...
...To cap the climax of stupidity we have supplied food at our kitchen doors and unlimited breeding places in our stable cellars...
...Finally, poisoning has long been used as an indoor measure...
...Still, in cities, where stable cellars are necessary, the so-called "fly-tight" construction so often insisted upon by authorities is calculated to keep up the supply of flies forever...
...The youth of a town, in connection with their nature lessons and high-school biology, could organize the campaign along the lines indicated—or invent and discover better—and between the opening of spring and June free the place of the usual summer plague of flies...
...The bottle keeps the strength of solution and doles it down as needed, so that, once set, it requires no attention for weeks or even months...
...These will not go back to the stable to lay their eggs...
...If we shut them out, they will scatter and find some other filth in which to lay their eggs...
...Now that it is convicted of being the bearer of all manner of germs of disease, its extermination has become the most urgent next step toward cleanly living...
...The main feature in our solution of this problem in the past has been the invention of fly screen, with which to shut ourselves in prison, while we yield to the enemy undisputed possession of the out-of-doors...
...That depends on whether we can or not, which brings us to methods...
...A fly may lay six batches of eggs of from 120 to 150 each, i. e., from 700 to 900 eggs...
...Millions of eggs may be laid in the material before it is put into the cellar, the warm material is the best possible fly incubator, the flies as they hatch will swarm out like live steam out of a boiler, whenever the place is opened, as it must be daily...
...Stop at Nothing Short of Extermination WITH INSECTS capable of breeding up into the millions, or even billions, in a few weeks, it is profoundly uninteresting to say that this or that laborious method "will reduce their numbers considerably...
...Everything most attractive to flies can be placed in this receptacle and by attaching the trap it becomes a veritable vacuum cleaner for flies...
...It has just been computed that a pair of flies beginning to breed early in April might, if all lived, be the progenitors of 191,010,000,000,000,000,000, by August...
...After feeding, it will fly up or crawl toward the light...
...If we have a screen covering the entire window on the outside, the simple device shown in the next figure will catch the flies as fast as they come...
...No cleanly plan of home sanitation allows accumulations about stables and out-houses...
...By means of guide-strips on the outside of the screen, invite them in—into another trap—we thus catch them "coming and going...
...Invite them into the cans, but catch every one that enters...
...THE THIRD LINE of attack is directed against the breeding places...
...How to do this is the problem...
...A good sized bottle is filled with a two per cent...
...With the three other methods we make assurance twice doubly sure...
...My plan consists of four lines of attack all directed toward catching the fly out of doors before it deposits its eggs...
...Why not put the flies in jail and let ourselves out...
...Formalin, the common germicide, is now recommended as the best poison to use...
...We cannot too strongly advocate intelligent cleanliness, but even if all stable and barnyard accumulations were plowed into the fields weekly, there would still remain, in the cities, the gutters, sewers, dumps and all sorts of accidental accumulations anywhere...
...Suppose instead we have at least one window on the sunny side and have it screened with durable wire net...
...and Mr...
...It is treason to give food and comfort to an enemy...
...These may hatch and come out as adult flies in ten days...
...This would mean axtermination—the stone of Sisyphus rolled over the top of the mountain and buried in the sea...
...Second: Before storms, evenings, or when savory cooking is going on, cabbage is being boiled or fruit is being canned—flies are attracted to the kitchen...
...If there were no free feeding, there would be no breeding...
...The first nation or community in which this degree of civic intelligence is attained will be free from flies from that time on, and we need to develop this intelligence with reference to a good many other natural enemies...
...Both bottle and saucer may be mounted in a wooden or wire bracket so that it may be hung in any sunny corner about the stable or porch...
...A Plan to Exterminate the Typhoid or Filth---Disease Fly By C. F. HODGE AS LONG AS the fly was known merely as an annoying nuisance there was little chance of enlisting concerted effort for its suppression...
...The public is an enormous mass of common sense, and nothing short of real common sense can move it...
...A pair of flies beginning in April may be the progenitors of billions by August...
...Then we have devised other disagreeable accessories, like tanglefoot paper and fly spatters with which to kill those that slip into our prisons...
...Two narrow strips of thin wood or tin, fastened to the outside of the screens, guide the flies to the small opening into the wire cage in the center...
...This plan the writer hopes to test more fully next season, but it seems to have enough common sense about it to insure effective elimination of breeding about all such places...
...and the account of how the work was accomplished would make for La Follette's the best story of the year...
...or, with a little shelf tacked in place, the bottle may be simply leaned up in a corner...
...Fly Trap Themselves THE FLY NUISANCE touches every home, and since one household can breed enough flies to cover at least a half a mile square, positively every family must cooperate...
...Catch Them Going and Coming...
...Why not carry the war into the enemies' territory at every point...
...solution, (two teaspoons to half pint of water) a saucer placed over it and the whole is inverted...
...During hot, dry weather, with no other water near, this device will cover the back porch or stable floor black with flies that will never lay eggs any more...
...Easier yet, give it the chance, and let the fly catch itself...
...Like the particle of dust that infests a house under the regime of the feather duster, you do not have to catch it but once...
...You may "shoo" the same fly a hundred times...
...and in the country, the miles of roadsides and acres of pastures...
...A nick is broken in the mouth of the bottle, or it may be set up on a bit of chip, so that the liquid will partially fill the saucer and a small slice of bread, covered with sugar, is placed in one side as an added attraction...
...If every household in a town had even one out-door trap over its most likely feeding place, it does not seem improbable that every fly would catch itself in this two weeks before it began to lay...
...Effective trapping at the most attractive feeding place on the premises— it may be the garbage can or swill barrel or a room or shed in hotels, restaurants or markets, in which all waste matters are collected—would render window and door screens unnecessary as a protection against Musca domestica,—the common fly...
...The figure shows convenient ways of applying it...
...In fact the plan has been before the country now for several years and I doubt whether a single city, town or even home has tried to follow it consistently for an entire season...
...All this means that the breeding places are an impossible field of attack in case of the filth fly...
...The one thing needful in intelligence enough on the part of every member of the community is to realize how many flies may breed from a single pair...
...After emerging from the pupa, however, according to recent observations made by Hewitt in England, a fly must feed for fourteen days before it matures its first laying of eggs...
...This means that we must, first of all, have a plan which shall appeal to everyone as fair and effective, and by its own merits enlist universal support...
...Then, too, the odor of this window will attract the flies which are seeking a place to oviposit...
...Is it not common sense to catch the pair in April...
...However, the "fly-tight" garbage can, now insisted upon by boards of health, is designed to drive the famishing creatures into our houses for food...
...The principle upon which the trap is made is illustrated in the pictures...
...The labor of handling the material is doubled and its value to the land, often more than halved by antiquated methods of "rotting...
...Let Mr...
Vol. 3 • April 1911 • No. 15
