It was in British official use from 1839.[4] This term was used extensively in the English Bills of Mortality as a cause of death from 1842. Robert Newstead (1859–1947) used this term in a 1908 publication in the Annals of Tropical Medicine and Parasitology, to describe the contribution of house flies (Musca domestica) towards the spread of infectious diseases. However, by the early 1900s, bacteriology "displaced the old fermentation theory",[2] and so the term became obsolete.