From Flies and Filth
to Food and Fever
The State Board of Health
of Florida

Asks you to carefully and attentively read this card; then
put the question directly to yourself, whether flies should not
be destroyed, or, a least, an effort be made to keep from pollut-
ing food prepared for you to eat.

Flies are disease carriers
Live and breed in all kinds of filth
Infect food and drink by germ-laden feet
Each female fly can lay 150 eggs
Should be kept out of dwellings

Flies breed in horse manure, cow dung, decaying vegetables, garbage of all description, dead
animals and human excrement.

Flies are Nature's scavengers, it is true, filling the same function as some bacteria do, but
become an intolerable nuisance and DANGER when entering human dwellings and contami-
nating foods.

The presence of flies is a direct evidence of careless housekeeping and the existence of filth
in some form about the premises.

Remember that when and where absolute cleanliness prevails there will be no flies.
Look daily after the garbage cans. See that they are carefully sprinkled with lime or kero-
sene oil and effectively covered.

Do the same thing to manure heaps, and remove all manure from stables every three or
four days, and when removed, cover with lime and sand.

Look carefully after the garbage cans. They require constant attention. This is particularly
true in hotels, boarding houses, station houses, railroad stations, and in fact, wherever people
congregate in large numbers.

Flies are fond of feasting on turberculous sputum, and hover around cuspidors. The specks
of flies contain live tubercle bacilli after they have eaten turberculous sputum, showing that the
bacilli will pass through the digestive tract of the fly in an active infective state.

Flies carry on their mouths (proboscis) and on their legs putrefying and disease germs, on
which they have recently fed, and then crawl over food, infecting it, unless shut out by screens.

Keep flies from the SICK, especially those ill with communicable or contagious diseases. If
The room is not screened the patient should be treated under a net, both for the safety to others as
well as for individual comfort.

SCREEN ALL FOOD. Apply this rule, not only to food prepared at home, but to food-
stuffs offered for sale, and especially fruits, salads and all other things which do not require
to be cooked. For -

Flies crawl over fruit when exposed for sale, unguarded by screens, and the generality of

people do not wash fruit before eating it. This is a fruitful source of human infection, particu-
larly if a case of typhoid fever nearby is being carelessly handled.

Don't forget that flies will carry the bacilli of typhoid fever from the stools of the patient (if
left exposed and not disinfected), if given an opportunity, to the food in the kitchen and dining-
room. This is no conjecture, for the Spanish-American War proved this fact.

The great secret of how to get rid of lies is CLEANLINESS FIRST, and by screening all
openings of the home, especially the kitchen and dining-room.

Look at the marginal illustrations. They are disgusting, it is true. So are flies. The disgust
that your stomach receives through your eye is as nothing, however, to the probable and pos-
sible benefit which you will receive by giving due heed to the warnings suggested by the etchings.



STATE B0ARD of HEALTH
E. M. HENDRY, President
Tampa, Florida

JOHN G. CHRISTOPHER H. L. SIMPSON, M. D.
Jacksonville, Florida Pensacola, Florida

JOSEPH Y. PORTER, M. D.
Secretary of State Health Officer
KEY WEST and JACKSONVILLE, FL

Record Company, St. Augustine