ENTOMOLOGY

SERIOUSNESS OF INSECT-BORNE DISEASES TO ARMIES 41}trenches. The lice spread from man to man, and they arc noted fol~leaving a man with feverish conditions for a normal man.Another disease which has been especially bothersome in the trenchesis scabies. Both horses and men are seriously afflicted with this mitedisease, and special veterinary hospitals were constructed in France solelyfor handling horse scabies.In malarious countries where mosquitoes are breeding in great numbers,malaria is a very serious camp and army problem. Campaigns intropical countries are endangered often by yellow fever, dengue andfilariasis, which are also mosquito-borne diseases.The troops engaged in Asia and some parts of the Mediterranean littoralhad to contend with the possibilities of plague outbreaks. Troopsengaged in the African campaigns had to deal with trypanosome andspirochrete diseases. Along the Mediterranean littoral pappataci feveris to be seriously considered. For example, a detachment of the BritishArmy in Egypt was suddenly attacked by an outbreak of this disease.We are all familiar with the disaster of our Spanish-American Warin which so many thousands were carried away by typhoid fever, dysenteryand diarrhea, all fly-borne diseases. In the present war, to thesemust be added Asiatic cholera, also borne by the fly.The great q_uantity of carcasses on the battlefield gives rise to myriadsof flesh and carrion flies and as a consequence of the habit of theseflies of attacking wounds of living people, there were many cases ofhuman as well as animal anthrax in the European War.These are only the more important army diseases carried by insects.One of the greatest dangers to troops in active service lies in theirmoving into countries with obscure or little studied diseases, or diseasesagainst which the men have had no chance to develop immunity.