OUR BABIES.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXX, Issue 5, 8 April 1916, Page 7

OUR BABIES.

' (By Hygeia.) Published under the auspices of the Kojul New Zealand Society for the Health of Women and Children. "It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ahbulanee at the bottom." THE HOUSE FLY. * Recently a correspondent complained of the pest of flies from which she was suffering, saying that, in spite of every care i" the house and its'surroundings, the rooms were infested with them—not only the kit-hen and dining room, but even the bedrooms being invaded. The same complaint lias come from many sources during the present season, and, as flies are known to be carriers of disease, J am sure that my readers will he glad to be reminded of Dr. Champtaloup'rf address on the subject, at the annual meeting of the. Dunedin 15ranch of the Society, nearly four years ago. A DA.NGEROUS NEIGHBOUR: THE COMMON HOUSE ELY.

I Dr. S. T. Champaloitp, Professor o: Public Heaiim and Bacteriology, de- ! livered a most informative and arrestj ing lecture, which he had entitled "A Dangerous Neighbour: The House Ely." It was profusely illustrated by excellent lantern views; and if the lecturer's desire was to make this insect an object of horror and loathing he was certainly entirely successful. There were many interesting problems in preventive medicine, he sajd, at 'which both the laboratory worker and the medical officer of health were working, and one of the most important of these was the .question of carriage of infection from place to place or from man to man by means of insects, animals, or man himself. Man himself, though often unaware of it, might harbor typhoid and diphtheria bacilli, and so infect his relatives and friends, though he himself might be perfectly well. Cats, fowls, and dogs all play their p ar t—the latter especially i" relation to the disease of hydatids. THE HOUSE ¥ly A CARRIER OF MANY DISEASES. The common house fly did not restrict its attentions to a single disease, but might be the means of spreading typhoid, cholera, tuberculosis,, dysentery, infantile diarrhoea, and parasitic and other diseases. If, as he hoped to show, the house fly (Musca domestica) could transmit all these diseases, by settling on and dabbling in all sorts of filth, it would earn the name of a "dangerous neighbour, >; winch had been given it by Dr. Prudden. As that observer remarked:— It is not among lions and tigers and reptiles that we have to look for man's most destructive animal- enemy. These mostly stay at home and mind their own business, and if an unwary man now and then suffers from them it is an even chance that it is his own fault • but the house fly wanders about and gets its objectionable person onto or' into almost everything. It breeds chiefly in manure or garbage heaps. It revels in almost all those things which to the normal modern man seem dirty, filthy and disgusting. Then it wanders over the food and bodies of men, women, and children whenever opportunity offers. This is bad enough, but the worst of it is that the bacteria which are swarming in most of the stuff it eats and dabbles its body and feet in are alive, and when it feeds on infective material, which it does at every opportunity, these disease bacteria may be carried direct and in full virulence to the food and persons of the well.

In his .subsequent remarks there might be unsavoury particulars, but he had endeavored to gloss them over, as far as possible, and to avoid anything more sensational than was needed to give a true picture of the part the fly played in its relation to man. DEVELOPMENT AND RAPID REPRODUCTION OF FLIES. The first slides shown were designed to illustrate the egg, larva,' and chrysalis stages. The lecturer explained that the cycle from the laying of the eggs to the perfect insect took 10 to 14 days under favorable conditions, but at

A FAIR WARNING. ONE THAT SHOULD BE HEEDED BY ALL. Frequently the first sign of kidney i trouble is a slight ache or pain in the loins. Neglect of this warning makes the way 'easy for more serious troubles i—dropsy, gravel, Bright's disease. 'Tis well to pay attention to the first sign. (Weak kidneys generally grow weaker, and delay is often dangerous. Residents of this locality place reliance in Doan's Backache Kidney Pills. This tested remedy has been used in kidney trouble for years and is recommended all over the civilised world. Head the following : ; Mr Charles Wolferston, Brooklyn Road, Stratford, says:—"For ten (years I suffered more or less from Severe aching pains across the small \ of my back. Sometimes they were ! very severe, and it was as much a,s I Iconic! do to get about. i could not bend my back without enduring positive torture, and this handicapped mo u good deal. Dizzy attacks and disordered secretions were other symptoms which clearly showed my kidneys were in a bad way. About two years npn 1 was advised to take a mur-e u.f Doan's Backache Kidney Pills, nnd they were spoken of so Iv.ghiy, that i started, using them without delay. Alter a day or so the pains in my bnoi< began to ease, and as 1 persevered I with the treatment the improvement | was maintained, until finally I was cured, and 1 have had no return of the kidney trouble since." Doan's'Backache Kidney Pdls ore sold bv all chemists and storekeepers at 3s per bottle (six bottles 16s Gd), or will be posted on roceipt of yrico by Foster-McClellan Co., 7G Pitt Street, Sydney. „,,.,-, | But, bo sure you get DCA... S. 1

a low temperature it might take sever;il weeks. It had been estimated that 1200 flies would issue lVo.ni -a pound of. horse manure,, and that a pair of flies mating in spring might be progenitors of 191 thousand billion flies by late summer. Various investigators had established the fact that flies do not wander of themselves far from thenbreeding place;, so that the presence of these insects in any numbers must indicate the proximity of undesirable matter in which they can breed. Birds and fowls are useful in keeping down the fly, not only by attacking the insect itself, but through their fondness for the larvae which abounded in refuse heaps.

NOTE BY "HYGEIA." On hearing how extremely prolific the house fly is, some members of Dr. Champtaloup's audience were inclined to take a fatalistic view of the situation, and comfortably resign themselves to the conviction that they could do nothing to stem such an invading horde—that they might just take their chance. However, the lecturer clearly ed, later on, how much could bt done, and was being done, in 4mple practical ways, especially in the United States, "to combat the evil; and why not? In New Zealand we coacluded, not so long ago, that rabb.ts mn4 be allowed to breed and spreaa unchecked, until we were forced to face the problem. Moreover, the fly pest is almost precisely on all fours with ll e mosquito pest—the pest that wVT nouknow lies behind what, have ijee'n two of the greatest scourges of mah*md- - viz., Malarial Fever and "Yellow Fever. No' drug in the Pharmacopoeia prpved anything more than a feeble palliative, especially as regards Yellow Fever, but the' discovery of th© fapt f.ha«t nios-, quitpes can be arrested in their breeding haunts by mere traces of kerosene placed in pools and swamps, has made localities healthy which a few years ago were practically Uninhabitable. We have had no picturesque descriptions of the deadly ravages stealthily wrought amongst babies throughout the whole world in summer time by the agency of house flies—nothing that strikes the imagination like the vivid, panic horror of Yellow Fever at Panama and in the Gulf of Mexico, though the domestic fly has seemingly been claiming many more Victims all the time.,.

No; Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes lias written of fly-borne Infantile Diarrohea or Typhoid as he did of Yellow Fever :• — Dr. Benjamin -Rush (the leading American physician of his day) thought lie 'had mastered Yellow Fever. "Thank God!" he said; "out of one hundred patients whom I have visited or prescribed for this day, I have lost none!" .Buthe spoke too soon. Whore was all his legacy of knowledge when the blue flies were buzzing a little later over the coffins of the unhuried dead piled up in the cemetery of New Orleans, at the edge of the huge trenches yawning to receive them ? The unmasking and defeat of the mosquito is universally regarded as perhaps the most signal victory in the modern science of Preventive Medicine; but so far as we and our babies are concerned the enemy at the gate is, as Dr. Champtaloup tells us, the House Fly, and we, must all make common cause against him, allowing him no breeding-placea near our homes, and ruthlessly trapping or poisoning him whenever and wherever he gains entry.