KITCHEN MIDDENS • FREE TRANSLATOR.ORG • Definition of Kitchen middens

... he necessarily comes into contact, of injurious parasites and hurtful living things which lurk in dirt and rubbish. At first the larger and more obvious hurtful creatures—snakes, rats, mice, scorpions, blow-flies—were eliminated by some elementary attempts at removal of rubbish and kitchen middens. Then ticks (which African savages still do not trouble to remove from their bodies) and later fleas and bugs became unpopular; lice were long regarded as inevitable, and even beneficial, and by some populations and ...

— More Science From an Easy Chair • Sir E. Ray (Edwin Ray) Lankester