, screening of
food, destruction of breeding places of flies, sterilization of
drinking water, boiling of milk and vegetables, and in the case of
typhoid and paratyphoid fevers, inoculation, the chances of intestinal
disease germs getting through from one person to another are
comparatively small, as the results would indicate.

To show that these results are not due to accident an example will
demonstrate: Early in the war when the British took over from the
French a section of the line in the Ypres salient, the Belgian
population in the little village of Vlamertinge and neighborhood was
being devastated with typhoid fever, and the French troops also had a
great many cases. When the British troops took over the line they not
only escaped getting typhoid fever themselves, but they succeeded in
absolutely stamping it out among the civilian population, and in
getting rid of any "carriers" of the disease.

The cases were discovered by a house-to-house investigation by "The
Friends' Search Party"--a group of Quakers who had conscientious
scruples against bloodshed. This search party notified the medical
authorities, particularly the laboratory in the area, of any doubtful
cases, and the diagnosis was then made by laboratory methods. In the
last six months of my stay in France, near the Belgian border, I do
not think that the Friends' search party unearthed a single case of
typhoid, and as a matter of fact few cases of the ordinary epidemic
diseases such as measles or diphtheria were discovered, although they
continued to make house to house investigations and report to us
regularly.

The insect-borne diseases in the Western Europe war zone are, as far
as we know, carried by flies, lice and mosquitoes. Flies carry disease
germs more or less mechanically, and are controlled by the methods
outlined above.

Mosquitoes are responsible for transmitting malaria and yellow fever,
though the latter never occurs in Europe. Malaria in France is also
comparatively unknown, though we found the Anopheles mosquito which is
responsible for transmitting the disease elsewhere.

There were also numerous cases of malaria recurring in soldiers from
India, Egypt, and other hot countries, so that we had both the
infected individual with the malaria parasites in his blood, and the
mosquito which was capable of carrying the organisms. Yet in 1915 we
had only a dozen cases of malaria develop in men who had never been
out of England, and were