ENTOMOLOGY

314 SANITARY ENTOMOLOGYAmerican peons, the European peasants, the Mohammedan populationsof Africa and Asia. Among the Mohammedans, their religion" forbidskilling insects and from childhood they become inured to their attack.War serves to aggravate con~itions by concentrating refugees and pris~oners in crowded, unhygienic zones, and by mixing troops from all stationsof life and from all races. Among our own people, lumber camps, miningcommunities, jails, poorhouses, lodging houses, construction camps,ghettos, negro communities, Mexican colonies, Indian reservations, tramps,and vagabonds are the principal reservoirs of infection which infect ourarmies and the civil population. Ignorant, degraded people everywhereare sources of lice. Our public schools, where children from all strata ofsociety mingle, furnish constant trouble as distributing centers of headlice, as the children's hats and clothing hanging on racks afford easymeans of spreading the vermin. Infection from lice may occur as justmentioned in clothes racks, public transportation, public halls, publictoilets, hotels and lodging houses, and by coming in direct contact withlousy individuals.CONTROL MEASURESOut of conditions as described above have arisen heroic methods oftreatment. Wh~n things are done in armies they must be done on a largescale. Consequently we find that Dr. Strong's commission beganto educate 'the Serbian nation on the necessity of bathing and cleansingthe wearing apparel, and similar efforts were later made in Roumania.And furthermore, with the cleansing came the control of the epidemics.The British in 1915 began isolating German prisoners for 14 daysafter capture, for observation, and they treated or destroyed theirclothing and bathed them as promptly as possible. The isolation ofprisoners was later practiced quite generally.It has become a well-defined principle now that new acquisitions to amilitary camp must be treated for lice. This treatment is called delousingor disinsection. Men returning from the trenches, prisoners ofwar, men who have been on furlough, new recruits, and new units mustbe inspected and given a complete delousing treatment on general principles.This treatment often varies in detail but consists of thoroughbathing, cleansing of the clothes and ac.coutrements, and disinfectionof bedding and baggage.On the Mexican border the United States Public Health Service hasfound it necessary to exercise a rigid supervision over refugees fromMexico, as the disturbed political conditions in that country have resultedin a spreading of typhus fever from the plateau regions, where itis endemic, to all parts of the country. The immigrants are stripped andgiven identification tags for their clothing and baggage, and then they