Insects and disease / by John B. Huber.

  • Huber, John Bessner, 1864-
Date:
1908
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Insects and disease / by John B. Huber. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    ment. They certainly disseminate cholera; and cases of tetanus seem to have been originated through their agency. I have in connection with this subject been greatly interested in the work done by Daniel D. Jackson, S.B., in behalf of the Merchants’ Asso- ciation of New York, as presented in their re- port to Governor Hughes on the pollution of New York Harbor as a menace to health bv the dissemination of intestinal diseases through the agency of the common house fly. In considering the ways in which flies act as agents in the propagation of disease, one should first take into account atmospheric impurities. Dr. Jackson has found, for instance, in one specimen of city dust, plaster, iron rust, stone-dust, cement from build- ing operations, dirt from excavations or from badly constructed tents, ashes, house-sweepings, and dried garbage blown from barrels and cans, chimney-soot and cinder from industrial plants, excrement of horses, dogs and other animals, dried sputum of the tuberculous and of those having bronchitis, naso-pharyngeal catarrh or pneumonia in its first stages. How pathogenic a dirty atmosphere may be is impressed upon any one who has seen the series of plates which Dr. Woodbury had exposed when he was the Metropolitan Street Cleaning Commissioner. Of two such plates one would represent atmospheric conditions in dense- ly crowded neighborhoods, where the sanitary conditions were comparatively poor. And such a plate would presently, after exposure, teem with bacteria, moulds, fungi and every kind of impurity deleterious to human health. Its com- panion plate, exposed in a cleanly and salubrious district under precisely similar conditions, would be almost wholly free of impurities.