Web wonders

‘without wings, without legs, without eyes, wallowing well pleased in the midst of a mass of excrement,’ as the author Henry Mayhew described. Flies carried bacterial gastroenteritic diseases and were the cause of significant infant mortality in the late nineteenth century in the absence of good sanitation. The prospect of invasion by the damaging Colorado potato beetle provided impetus for the development of economic entomology in the UK, and, as political and scientific agendas clashed over the issue, Britain’s first official agricultural entomologist’s post resulted from this situation. Police stations carried pictures of the beetle in the UK up to the 1960s alongside wanted, suspected criminals. Although the beetle didn’t produce the problem in the UK originally feared, it raised the spectre of insect pests. The book also highlights some early entomological pioneers. The wealthy Eleanor Ormerod applied her interest in the discipline by assisting — without payment — various agricultural bodies, including the Royal Agricultural Society, with her expertise. Her role in introducing the large-scale introduction pesticides to kill insects damaging crops was a critical step in the establishment of the field of economic entomology. Clark also records the activities of the entomologist Harold Lefoy at Imperial College, London. Lefoy founded Rentokil, the pest control company, and may have been one of the first ‘research entrepreneurs’. But on 10th October 1925, he was overcome by fumes while experimenting on a gas of his own invention, and never enjoyed the profits of his company. The development of medical entomology, too, is explored. It largely evolved from parasitological studies, and early reports in the field generally came from medical doctors who lacked insect knowledge. In 1877, physician Patrick Manson claimed that the filarial worms responsible for elephantiasis were transmitted to humans when drinking water that was infested with mosquito eggs: he had failed to observe the transmission of the parasite during the insect blood meal. Understanding of insects was becoming a serious business.