Word: bedbug
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...districts, "Little Cheyenne" and "the Levee," were solid with gambling joints, peep shows, flophouses and saloons, and harbored the riffraff of half a continent. The First Ward's blocks of bordellos ran from haughty establishments like the Everleigh house (wine: $12 downstairs; $15 in a room), to a "Bedbug Row" of noisome prostitutes' cribs. The jangle of its pianos never stopped...
...other occupations have refused to be outdone by the morticians. America's dignified Society of Automotive Engineers has noted the use of their sacred title by such prideful up-and-comers as the "rat, cockroach and bedbug eradicators," whose organization is known impressively as the American Society of Exterminating Engineers. Other engineers now include: sleep-engineer (bedding manufacturer), imagineer (idea-man), custodian-engineer (one who furnishes creative janitorial service), esthetic-engineer (an artist), pediatric-engineer (a corn-cutter), civilization-engineer (a scientist), odor-engineer (perfume manufacturer), and social-engineer (one who "appreciates that one important function of education...
...most trouble, the termite and the brown dog tick are among the most menacing-their population is growing rapidly. But even in modern, skyscraping Manhattan, man's worst insect enemies are still the ancient, hardy foes against which he has waged long and barely equal warfare-the cockroach, bedbug, ant, moth, silverfish...
...bedbug is harder to poison. Unlike the roach, it is an epicure: it feeds on human blood. A loathsome, wingless insect, it is light brown and flat before feeding, swells up and turns mahogany afterward. Chief difficulty in fighting bedbugs : housewives hate to admit their presence. Though the common bedbug hurts little except family pride, a relative known as the "kissing bug" transmits Chagas' disease (a deadly parasitic disease originating in Brazil) to human beings. A Lethane spray is the most effective bedbug poison...
Censorship was lifted last week from one of the great scientific discoveries of World War II. It is an insecticide called DDT. DDT stopped a typhus epidemic in Naples. It promises to wipe out the mosquito and malaria, to liquidate the household fly, cockroach and bedbug, to control some of the most damaging insects that prey on the world's crops. Lieut. Colonel A. L. Ahnfeldt, of the U.S. Surgeon General's office, exclaimed last week: "DDT will be to preventive medicine what Lister's discovery of antiseptics was to surgery...