YOUR HEALTH: HERE'S HOW!
Stafford, Jane
YOUR HEALTH: Heres How! By JANE STAFFORD YOU have probably read about a new drug of the penicillin type which has gotten its first, trials in tuberculosis. The purpose of this column is to warn...
...DDT, however, is "the perfect answer to the bedbug problem," the government scientists state...
...If you use a 5 per cent DDT kerosene spray, use one quart to 250 square feet and apply as a coarse spray...
...The purpose of this column is to warn you against hoping for too much too soon...
...After a few hours of drying the bed may be made and used without fear of injury to the occupant...
...One-half pound will treat 1.000 square feet...
...Test tube experiments showed that streptomycin was bad medicine for tuberculosis bacilli...
...U. S. Department of Agriculture scientists say that enough data have been accumulated to "suggest" that it will be valuable for this purpose, but the proper dilutions to be used have not yet been worked out...
...They might be doomed to disappointment which, for the patients, could prove actually harmful...
...It may be used beneath rugs, on floors and even on soil that is visited by flea-infested animals...
...So Dr...
...DDT For Bedbugs, Fleas, Clothes Moths Some of you may want to use DDT to rid your home of clothes moths, carpet beetles, and silver fish now...
...Selman A. Waksman and associates at Rutgers University discovered it...
...the spray should be forced into each joint of the bed and both sides of the mattress should be lightly treated...
...It is applied to the same locations as recommended for the spray...
...Whereas penicillin is produced by a mold, streptomycin is produced by an organism that is between a mold and a bacterium, or germ, as the latter is popularly called...
...It is not necessary to treat walls, because the bedbugs must come to the beds for meals of blood and are killed when they come in contact with the residue of DDT on the bed...
...When they tried streptomycin as a remedy for experimental tuberculosis in guinea pigs, the results were strikingly good...
...This is enough material for a thorough and careful treatment of the mattress, pillows, springs, and joints in the bed frame...
...H. C. Hinshaw and W. H. Feldman...
...Waksman suggested to a group of scientists at the Mayo Clinic that they might like to investigate it...
...Fine sprays will drift to the walls where they are ineffective against fleas...
...These scientists had already been studying various chemicals which might be effective in tuberculosis...
...So you may be disappointed with your first trials...
...Results of this trial has just been reported by Drs...
...This particular organism lives in the earth...
...The scientists were very cautious in making their report and they even included in the scientific report some words of caution to lay persons...
...Morale plays a crucial part in the treatment of a disease like tuberculosis and having one's hopes roused and then crushed injures morale...
...The drug appeared to exert a limited suppressive effect especially on some of the more unusual forms of tuberculosis...
...No one actually knows yet what the final judgment will be on streptomycin for tuberculosis...
...The name of the drug is streptomycin...
...One and one-half ounces of 10 per cent DDT powder is sufficient for treatment of a full size bed...
...The next step was to try it on human patients...
...When a 5 per cent DDT solution (7 ounces technical grade DDT and 1 gallon kerosene) is used, about 3 liquid ounces of this spray is needed to each full size bed...
...If you have fleas in your home from Fido, Pussy, or rats, you can get rid of them by applying a 10 per cent DDT powder to the sleeping places of the dog or cat and in holes and runways used by rats...
...When properly applied as a 5 per cent spray or as a 10 per cent powder to mattresses, beds, and chicken houses, these places will remain free of bedbugs for 6 months or more...
...Wettable DDT powder may be used in water as a spray...
...It would be a great mistake for patients and their relatives to get too excited about this new drug at this stage...
Vol. 9 • October 1945 • No. 40
