MAN’S ENEMY, THE FLY

MAN’S ENEMY, THE FLY

Outline:

1.      Flies breed in dirt and are born in filth.

2.      The natural food of flies is often dirty.

3.      Yet they alight freely on human food and on the faces and bodies of men. Flies mean disease. They carry germs.

4.      Need for complete covering of food, attack breeding places.

  During the great war, a pamphlet was issued in the army. With the title (in what was called” Roman Urdu”). “Is makhi ko maro.” The army authorities had been impelled to publish this by the fact that many soldiers were suffering from dysentery, typhoid and stomach complaints. Most of those troubles arose from food and drink containing impurities and germs, and those germs were carried on to the food in most cases by the ordinary fly. In war, diseases caused by the fly and its infection cause more casualties on the whole than the bullets and bombs of the enemy.

The fly lays its eggs on decaying flesh or vegetable matter. Thus young flies begin life in dirty surroundings. That taste for filth remains with the fly, for it is always ready to settle on a dead animal, on a heap of manure, or on a festering wound. The next thing it sits upon may be the chapatti you are about to eat, or the fruit that is on a plate in your house. Thus the disease germs from the dirtiest objects plate in your house. Thus the disease germs from the dirtiest objects in the neighbourhood are conveyed to your food. Can you afford to have an enemy in your homes?

What a sight was seen only a few months ago by a medical officer of health when visiting a certain bazaar! Along a little street of houses and small shops ran on open drain. Along the drain ran dirty water from the houses, and children openly sat down to perform the office of nature in it. Flies buzzed all along the course of he drain. Near was a little shop with sweetmeats and grains for sale. A large flat basket was filled with jelebi, and there were hundreds of flies sitting on the sweetmeants? Is there any wonder that the hospitals are full of cholera and dysentery cases, and that so many children die in their first  year of life?

The fly must be declared an enemy. Around your houses, no rubbish or waste food must be left in which it can breed. Your food must be kept covered, and your house sprayed with some insecticide like Flit. You must refuse to buy from shopkeepers who allow their goods to be exposed to swarms of flies and you must explain this to them. Only by such vigorous steps can your health and the health of your family be safeguarded.