The Health bulletin [serial] - University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

March, 1927 The Health Bulletin 17
"The physicians urged that no laxitybe
permitted in the proper insjiection
of schools and precaution against disease
by school authorities.
" 'Religion and science are not contradictory,'
said Dr. Craig, 'I am sorry
for the scientist who cannot see anything
more in this world than what his
test tube and microscope reveal. You
cannot separate the mental, moral and
physical natures of a man and still have
a real man. Every clergyman needs to
be a medical doctor too.'
"Appealing for better public understant^ug
of the doctor's problems Dr.
Craig said :
" 'The doctor is very human ;
but in
emergency he must exjiress his sympathy
not in words but in action, so he
has gain( d the reputation of being hai-dboiled.
More and moie physicians are
learning to feel their responsibility and
they carry burdens of which their
patients do not dream ; they realize that
after all the patient trusts his doctor
next to bis God and they try to be
worthy of that trust.' "
THE HOUSE FLY PEST
THE NEWER ANATOMY
A State Board of Health nuise overheard
the following conversation between
two friends meeting at a bargain
sale.
Said the very fat lady to her very
thin friend, "Yes, it certainly is very
bad weather for "colds," but do you
want to know what I do for a cold"
"Sure," responded the thin friend.
"While I am not bothered much, Joe
frequently has an awful time getting
rid of a cold." "Well," said the first
lady, "when I feel one coming on, I just
take about a half teaspoonful of ginger
and put it in a cup and fill the cup with
boiling water. After I drink that I take
ten cents woith of castor oil. I drink
all this at bedtime and it lies all night
there in my lunys, and then next morning
when I get up I am all right and
the bad cold was kept off, and is gone."
"You know I like to read doctor's
books which tell all about your frame,
you know, so I will know all about such
things."
"So long," "Ta ta."
This is the one month of the year in
which active efforts directed at the prevention
of the breeding of house flies
is most effective. March should be the
one big clean-up month over and above
all others. If all stables could be
thoroughly cleaned and the manure
hauled out in the fields and covered
over with plowed earth, or if it could
be piled in compost heaps with suthcient
mixture of chemicals such as borax,
the house fly menace for the whole summer
could be greatly reduced. It is the
breeding of the early files which give
the pest such a start that makes measures
for control later so unsatisfactory.
The house fly represents one of the
paradoxes of nature. Its eggs are laid
and it is incubated and hatched in the
nastiest stable filth ; but on emergence
as a full grown adult fly into the air
and sunlight it is at first one of the
cleanest of insects. But like the pig
that always returns to its wallow, the
fly does not remain clean many seconds
after it emerges from its "so-called
puparium." From egg to full grown
fly may not take over two weeks, according
to temperature. During the
maggot or grub stage, which eveiy farm
boy is familiar with, they are easy to
destroy, if the eggs have been permitted
to be hatched. Any fermenting organic
matter affords suitable i«Jaces for the
laying of the eggs. As stated above
stables, especially horse stables, afford
ideal breeding places. After the eggs
have been laid and the maggot stage
reached, the giubs may still be destroyed
before hatching, but to do so
requires very hard, prompt and careful
work. However it is much better to
prevent the laying of the eggs if possible.
Naturally the best way to do this
is to destroy all adult flies before they
begin breeding in the very early spring.
Each adult female fly lays several
hundred eggs. They deposit the eggs
in batches at intervals varying from
two to four weeks. Fermenting organic
matter is not only plentiful around
horse stables, but is present in filthy
privies, open garbage piles, rotting
trash of any kind. All such make good
breeding places.