Baltimore Evening Sun (14 July 1911): 6.

From the 1906 edition of the Standard Dictionary, page 1092, column 3:

Mayorlet, n. A petty mayor.

Mayoral, n. The conductor in charge of a mule-teem.

A scientific missionary in whom hope seems to leap over-high is Dr. Clifton Fremont Hodge, of the Johns Hopkins Summer School. Dr. Hodge has lived in our fair city before—he is, in fact, a Hopkins Ph. D.—and yet he apparently cherishes a belief that he will be able to convince the people of Baltimore, or at least an appreciable portion of them, that the house-fly is an extremely dangerous pest—and within the short space of a few months. Sanguine man! Dreamer of rosy dreams! Ask him, along about the autumn of 1916, how many converts he has made!

Aa matter of fact, the propagation of any such new and anarchistic idea in Baltimore is always an enormously slow and tedious business. Do you remember the anti-spitting campaign? The part played by public and unlimited expectoration in the transmission of tuberculosis was discovered in the eighties and yet it was not until 1898 that the City Council of this town could be induced to consider an anti-spitting ordinance at all, and not until 1905 that an efficient one was passed. Many a Councilman made his funny speech and laughed his silly laugh during the long debate. How the vote stood at the end I don’t know, but I fancy that there must have been more than one brave and irreconcilable “nay.”

The war upon the mosquito, when it was inaugurated by Stovey Brown, was similarly productive of Councilmanic and journalistic mirth. Stovey began business in 1901 or 1902, at the suggestion of Dr. William J. Bliss, of the Johns Hopkins, but for a long while the fight was against great odds, and it was not until May 1, 1907, that the present ordinance went into effect.

That ordinance is a good one. It requires all wells, cisterns and cesspools to be covered with wire screens, or, failing that, to be treated with kerosene every 15 days, and provides a fine of $10 a day for violations. But the City Council, unluckily, has never provided money enough for its efficient enforcement. Thousands of cesspools in Baltimore are without screens, and very few of these, it would appear, are treated with kerosene, for mosquitoes are still plentiful among us. Now and then the police serve householders with formal notice setting forth the pains and penalties of disobeying the ordinance, but in the absence of regular inspections and prosecutions not much is accomplished. In my own neighborhood, so far as I know, inspections are never made. A few householders obey the law; the rest breed mosquitoes as of old. Next year, perhaps, or the year after, the agitation will be renewed, and by 1918 or 1920 the existing ordinance, or some other one, will be enforced.

Everyone knows bow long Baltimore has dallied with typhoid. So long ago as 1877 there was a very serious epidemic, and since far back in the eighties there has been a more or less audible demand for the filtration of the city water. Every summer the Commissioner of Health solemnly advises us that it is dangerous to drink the water that comes from the taps without first boiling it. But the construction of a filtration plant still belongs to the dim and misty future. Various experiments with chemical purifiers have been and are being made. Meanwhile, the suspicion has arisen that a filtration plant would not actually solve the problem. What, then, would? Give us a couple of generations to think it over.

Baltimore dallied with smallpox for 80 years. The value of vaccination began to be known in this country during the first years of the last century, but it was not until 1882 that the City Council passed the present vaccination ordinance, which requires the inoculation of all children before they reach the age of one year. The ordinance got through on October 24 of that year only because the city was then in the midst of an appalling epidemic. Before the end of the year 551 Baltimoreans died of smallpox. Naturally enough, the plain people restated compulsory vaccination, and so it was a good while before all of them were scraped. The death roll for 1883 thus rose to 633. Next year, with the town thoroughly vaccinated at last, there was but one death. During the 27 years since then, there have been but 15—and practically all of these victims have been darkies from the counties.

I rehearse these gloomy facts not to scare Dr. Hodge away, but merely to show what a herculean labor he has undertaken. About two months ago The Sun printed a mass of evidence tending to show that inoculation with a recently perfected vaccine was an effective preventive of typhoid fever. The opinions of physicians of first eminence supported that evidence. The remarkable results of experiments in the United States Army were cited. Health Commissioner James Bosley, appealed to for advice, announced that the new vaccine was undoubtedly of value. And yet I am informed, by a man who should know, that not 150 Baltimoreans, excluding those upon whom direct pressure has been brought to bear, have bared their arms.

Let Dr. Hodge swat the fly. He will perform, for a long while, a solo a capella. In the course of time, of course, he will gain a few recruits, and a few more will come into camp, and a few more. By 1914 the City Council will begin to discuss the matter, and by 1920, perhaps, all of the humor will be out of it and a preliminary and inefficient ordinance will be passed. Then another interval of five years, and a better ordinance will go on the books. Another five years and that ordinance will be enforced. Another five years and the fly will begin to disappear.

Meanwhile, the few who are interested in the matter will find much useful information in a new book by Dr. L. O. Howard, chief of the United States Bureau of Entomology. It is called “The House-Fly: Disease Carrier,” and discusses the whole subject learnedly and in detail. There are descriptions, with pictures, of all the common varieties of fly; descriptions, too, of their insect enemies; a clear account of the manner in which they transmit disease, and excellent chapters on their extermination. Dr. Howard’s authority is beyond question: no man is better equipped to discuss the subject. The book is published by the Stokes Company and may be had at any book store for $1.60. In particular, let the stray inquirer read the paragraph on page 122, beginning with “Colonel Jones.”

No; I get no graft for mentioning this book. My one aim is to keep the Baltimore book-sellers busy this summer. No doubt they will receive many orders—perhaps 18, or even 20.

H. L. Mencken