Abstract
A PROMISING advance in solving the problem of the destruction of bed bugs is reported in the British Medical Journal of February 27, p. 459, by Messrs. S. A. Ashmore, of the Government Laboratory, and A. W. McKenny Hughes, of the Natural History Museum, acting for the Committee of the Medical Research Council. That the evil is a grievous one, although often passed by on account of the unsavoury nature of the subject, can be gathered from conversations with medical officers of health, who have been known to declare that they can identify streets with infested houses from the paleness of the children due to sleeplessness produced by bites. It has been said that in hot weather children are driven from their beds to play in the streets in some quarters during the light night hours. Disadvantages attach to most of the treatments previously tried. Thus hydrocyanic acid in the gaseous form is lethal to the insects and also to their eggs, but the use of this highly toxic substance obviously requires great precautions, especially, for example, in treating a room situated in the midst of tenements. Certain chlorinated aromatic derivatives appeared promising, but were found to act as liver poisons on the animal organism, and presumably on man, if traces were left unevaporated.
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Destruction of the Bed Bug. Nature 139, 706 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/139706b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/139706b0