The Wicked Fly

Pacific Press Publishing Association · Mountain View, California · Nov 21, 1911

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 38, No. 46.

THE following from the World's Work is worthy of consideration by all housewives, or others who have to do with the managing of homes or dwellings of any kind:

"The house-fly exists only through the toleration of men — a toleration which, were it not ignorant, would be criminal.

"The house-fly is the most terrible single enemy that mankind has among living creatures. Beasts of the jungle have slain their thousands, but this prowler in the household has slain his tens of thousands. Of all vermin he is the most filthy; of all purveyors of disease the most deadly.

"The house-fly is born in offal — nowhere else. And his life is in keeping with his birth. He lives, to the day of his death, in filth. The manure pile, the cuspidor, and the cesspool are his home. It is from these haunts that he comes to visit the kitchen, the dining-room, and the nursery. He drags his filthy feet across the bread, dips them in the butter, wipes them on the meat, and bathes in the milk. He seeks out the sick-room, and sips the delicious excretions of the consumptive, the typhoid fever patient, and the child with summer complaint. Then he flies to the kitchen, and deposits the poison on the rim of the milk bottle, and to the nursery, where he lights on the baby's lips.

"Don't mind a rattlesnake or two about the house, but kill every house-fly as you value your life and the lives of your children. Don't buy your groceries or your milk or bread or fruit of any dealer who is not as particular as you are yourself. There would be little typhoid fever without the house-fly, and little chance of cholera infantum. And there can be no flies where there is no filth. Keep your kitchen, cellar, and yard clean; let no refuse accumulate. Put lime about the stable, and keep the garbage pail tightly covered. Kill every fly you see; burn insecticides (pyrethrum is the best); use fly-traps, sticky paper, and the wire paddle, until the house is clear. If you can't drive out the enemy unaided, call on the board of health."