Chapter I: The History of Poison Gases1

The introduction of poison gases by the Germans at Ypres in April, 1915, marked a new era in modern warfare. The popular opinion is that this form of warfare was original with the Germans. Such, however, is not the case. Quoting from an article in the _Candid Quarterly Review_, =4=, 561, “All they can claim is the inhuman adoption of devices invented in England, and by England rejected as too horrible to be entertained even for use against an enemy.” But the use of poison gases is even of an earlier origin than this article claims.

[Footnote 1: This chapter originally appeared in Science, Vol. =49=, pp. 412-417 (1919).]

The first recorded effort to overcome an enemy by the generation of poisonous and suffocating gases seems to have been in the wars of the Athenians and Spartans (431-404 B.C.) when, besieging the cities of Platea and Belium, the Spartans saturated wood with pitch and sulfur and burned it under the walls of these cities in the hope of choking the defenders and rendering the assault less difficult. Similar uses of poisonous gases are recorded during the Middle Ages. In effect they were like our modern stink balls, but were projected by squirts or in bottles after the manner of a hand grenade. The legend is told of Prester John (about the eleventh century), that he stuffed copper figures with explosives and combustible materials which, emitted from the mouths and nostrils of the effigies, played great havoc.

The idea referred to by the writer in the _Candid Quarterly Review_, is from the pen of the English Lord Dundonald, which appeared in the publication entitled “The Panmure Papers.” This is an extremely dull record of an extremely dull person, only rendered interesting by the one portion, concerned with the use of poison gases, which, it is said, “should never have been published at all.”

That portion of the article from the _Candid Quarterly Review_ dealing with the introduction of poisonous gas by the Germans, and referred to in the first paragraph above, is quoted in full as follows:

“The great Admiral Lord Dundonald—perhaps the ablest
sea captain ever known, not even excluding Lord
Nelson—was also a man of wide observation, and no
mean chemist. He had been struck in 1811 by the deadly
character of the fumes of sulphur in Sicily; and, when
the Crimean War was being waged, he communicated to
the English government, then presided over by Lord
Palmerston, a plan for the reduction of Sebastopol
by sulphur fumes. The plan was imparted to Lord
Panmure and Lord Palmerston, and the way in which it
was received is so illustrative of the trickery and
treachery of the politician that it is worth while to
quote Lord Palmerston’s private communication upon it
to Lord Panmure:

“LORD PALMERSTON TO LORD PANMURE

“‘HOUSE OF COMMONS, 7th August, 1855
“‘I agree with you that if Dundonald will go out
himself to superintend and direct the execution of
his scheme, we ought to accept his offer and try his
plan. If it succeeds, it will, as you say, save a great
number of English and French lives; if it fails _in
his hands_, we shall be exempt from blame, and if
we come in for a small share of the ridicule, we can
bear it, and the greater part will fall on him. You
had best, therefore, make arrangement with him without
delay, and with as much secrecy as the nature of things
will admit of.’

“Inasmuch as Lord Dundonald’s plans have already been
deliberately published by the two persons above named,
there can be no harm in now republishing them. They
will be found in the first volume of ‘The Panmure
Papers’ (pp. 340-342) and are as follows:

“‘(ENCLOSURE)

“‘BRIEF PRELIMINARY OBSERVATIONS

“‘It was observed when viewing the Sulphur Kilns, in
July, 1811, that the fumes which escaped in the rude
process of extracting the material, though first
elevated by heat, soon fell to the ground, destroying
all vegetation, and endangering animal life to a great
distance, and it was asserted that an ordinance existed
prohibiting persons from sleeping within the distance
of three miles during the melting season.

“‘An application of these facts was immediately made
to Military and Naval purposes, and after mature
consideration, a Memorial was presented on the subject
to His Royal Highness the Prince Regent on the 12th
of April, 1812, who was graciously pleased to lay it
before a Commission, consisting of Lord Keith, Lord
Exmouth and General and Colonel Congreve (afterwards
Sir William), by whom a favorable report having been
given, His Royal Highness was pleased to order that
secrecy should be maintained by all parties.
“‘(Signed) DUNDONALD

“‘7th August, 1855’

“‘MEMORANDUM

“‘Materials required for the expulsion of the Russians
from Sebastopol: Experimental trials have shown that
about five parts of coke effectually vaporize one part
of sulphur. Mixtures for land service, where weight
is of importance, may, however, probably be suggested
by Professor Faraday, as to operations on shore I
have paid little attention. Four or five hundred tons
of sulphur and two thousand tons of coke would be
sufficient.

“‘Besides these materials, it would be necessary to
have, say, as much bituminous coal, and a couple of
thousand barrels of gas or other tar, for the purpose
of masking fortifications to be attacked, or others
that flank the assailing positions.

“‘A quantity of dry firewood, chips, shavings, straw,
hay or other such combustible materials, would also
be requisite quickly to kindle the fires, which ought
to be kept in readiness for the first favourable and
steady breeze.
“‘DUNDONALD

“‘7th August, 1855’

“‘=_Note._=—The objects to be accomplished
being specially stated the responsibility of their
accomplishment ought to rest on those who direct their
execution.

“‘Suppose that the Malakoff and Redan are the objects
to be assailed it might be judicious merely to obscure
the Redan (by the smoke of coal and tar kindled in ‘The
Quarries’), so that it could not annoy the Mamelon,
where the sulphur fire would be placed to expel
the garrison from the Malakoff, which ought to have
all the cannon that can be turned towards its ramparts
employed in overthrowing its undefended ramparts.

“‘There is no doubt but that the fumes will envelop all
the defenses from the Malakoff to the Barracks, and
even to the line of battleship, the Twelve Apostles, at
anchor in the harbour.

“‘The two outer batteries, on each side of the Port,
ought to be smoked, sulphured, and blown down by
explosion vessels, and their destruction completed by a
few ships of war anchored under cover of the smoke.’

“That was Lord Dundonald’s plan in 1855, improperly
published in 1908, and by the Germans, who thus learnt
it, ruthlessly put into practise in 1915.

“Lord Dundonald’s memoranda, together with further
elucidatory notes, were submitted by the English
government of that day to a committee and subsequently
to another committee in which Lord Playfair took
leading part. These committees, with Lord Dundonald’s
plans fully and in detail before them, both reported
that the plans were perfectly feasible; that the
effects expected from them would undoubtedly be
produced; but that those effects were so horrible that
no honorable combatant could use the means required to
produce them. The committee therefore recommended that
the scheme should not be adopted; that Lord Dundonald’s
account of it should be destroyed. How the records
were obtained and preserved by those who so improperly
published them in 1908 we do not know. Presumably they
were found among Lord Panmure’s papers. Admiral Lord
Dundonald himself was certainly no party to their
publication.”

One of the early, if not the earliest suggestion as to the use of poison gas in shell is found in an article on “Greek Fire,” by B. W. Richardson.[2]

[Footnote 2: _Popular Science Review_, =3=, 176 (1864).]

He says:

“I feel it a duty to state openly and boldly, that if
science were to be allowed her full swing, if society
would really allow that ‘all is fair in war,’ war
might be banished at once from the earth as a game
which neither subject nor king dare play at. Globes
that could distribute liquid fire could distribute
also lethal agents, within the breath of which no man,
however puissant, could stand and live. From the summit
of Primrose Hill, a few hundred engineers, properly
prepared, could render Regent’s Park, in an incredibly
short space of time, utterly uninhabitable; or could
make an army of men, that should even fill that space,
fall with their arms in their hands, prostrate and
helpless as the host of Sennacherib.

“The question is, shall these things be? I do not
see that humanity should revolt, for would it not be
better to destroy a host in Regent’s Park by making
the men fall as in a mystical sleep, than to let
down on them another host to break their bones, tear
their limbs asunder and gouge out their entrails with
three-cornered pikes; leaving a vast majority undead,
and writhing for hours in torments of the damned?
I conceive, for one, that science would be blessed
in spreading her wings on the blast, and breathing
into the face of a desperate horde of men prolonged
sleep—for it need not necessarily be a death—which
they could not grapple with, and which would yield them
up with their implements of murder to an enemy that in
the immensity of its power could afford to be merciful
as Heaven.

“The question is, shall these things be? I think they
must be. By what compact can they be stopped? It were
improbable that any congress of nations could agree on
any code regulating means of destruction; but if it
did, it were useless; for science becomes more powerful
as she concentrates her forces in the hands of units,
so that a nation could only act, by the absolute and
individual assent of each of her representatives.
Assume, then, that France shall lay war to England, and
by superior force of men should place immense hosts,
well armed, on English soil. Is it probable that the
units would rest in peace and allow sheer brute force
to win its way to empire? Or put English troops on
French soil, and reverse the question?

“To conclude. War has, at this moment, reached, in its
details, such an extravagance of horror and cruelty,
that it can not be made worse by any art, and can only
be made more merciful by being rendered more terribly
energetic. Who that had to die from a blow would not
rather place his head under Nasmyth’s hammer, than
submit it to a drummer-boy armed with a ferrule?”

The _Army and Navy Register_ of May 29, 1915, reports that

“among the recommendations forwarded to the Board of
Ordnance and Fortifications there may be found many
suggestions in favor of the asphyxiation process,
mostly by the employment of gases contained in bombs
to be thrown within the lines of the foe, with varying
effects from peaceful slumber to instant death. One
ingenious person suggested a bomb laden to its full
capacity with snuff, which should be so evenly and
thoroughly distributed that the enemy would be
convulsed with sneezing, and in this period of paroxysm
it would be possible to creep up on him and capture him
in the throes of the convulsion.”

That the probable use of poisonous gas has often been in the minds of military men during recent times is evidenced by the fact that at the Hague Conference in 1899 several of the more prominent nations of Europe and Asia pledged themselves not to use projectiles whose only object was to give out suffocating or poisonous gases. Many of the Powers did not sign this declaration until later. Germany signed and ratified it on Sept. 4, 1900, but the United States never signed it. Further, this declaration was not to be binding in case of a war in which a non-signatory was or became a belligerent. Admiral Mahan, a United States delegate, stated his position in regard to the use of gas in shell (at that time an untried theory) as follows:

“The reproach of cruelty and perfidy addressed against
these supposed shells was equally uttered previously
against fire-arms and torpedoes, although both are
now employed without scruple. It is illogical and not
demonstrably humane to be tender about asphyxiating
men with gas, when all are prepared to admit that it
is allowable to blow the bottom out of an ironclad
at midnight, throwing four or five hundred men into
the sea to be choked by the water, with scarcely the
remotest chance to escape.”

At the Hague Congress of 1907, article 23 of the rules adopted for war on land states:

“It is expressly forbidden (_a_),
to employ poisons or poisonous weapons.”

Before the War suffocating cartridges were shot from the cartridge-throwing rifle of 26 mm. These cartridges were charged with ethyl bromoacetate, a slightly suffocating and non-toxic lachrymator. They were intended for attack on the flanking works of permanent fortifications, flanking casements or caponiers, into which the enemy tried to make the cartridges penetrate through the narrow slits used for loopholes. The men who were serving the machine guns or the cannon of the flanking works would have been bothered by the vapor from the ethyl bromoacetate, and the assailant would have profited by their disturbance to get past the obstacle presented by the fortification. The employment of these devices, not entailing death, did not contravene the Hague conventions.

The only memorable operations in the course of which these devices were used before the War was the attack on the Bonnet gang at Choisy-le-roi.

In connection with the suggested use of sulfur dioxide by Lord Dundonald and the proposed use of poisonous gases in shell, the following description of a charcoal respirator by Dr. J. Stenhouse,[3] communicated by Dr. George Wilson in 1854, is of interest.

[Footnote 3: _Trans. Royal Scottish Soc. Arts_, =4=, Appendix O, 198 (1854).]

“Dr. Wilson commenced by stating that, having read with
much interest the account of Dr. Stenhouse’s researches
on the deodorizing and disinfecting properties
of charcoal, and the application of these to the
construction of a new and important kind of respirator,
he had requested the accomplished chemist to send one
of his instruments for exhibition to the society,
which he had kindly done. Two of the instruments were
now on the table, differing, however, so slightly in
construction, that it would be sufficient to explain
the arrangement of one of them. Externally, it had
the appearance of a small fencing-mask of wire gauze,
covering the face from the chin upwards to the bridge
of the nose, but leaving the eyes and forehead free.
It consisted, essentially, of two plates of wire
gauze, separated from each other by a space of about
one-fourth or one-eighth of an inch, so as to form a
small cage filled with small fragments of charcoal. The
frame of the cage was of copper, but the edges were
made of soft lead, and were lined with velvet, so as to
admit of their being made to fit the cheeks tightly and
inclose the mouth and nostrils. By this arrangement, no
air could enter the lungs without passing through the
wire gauze and traversing the charcoal. An aperture is
provided with a screw or sliding valve for the removal
and replenishment of the contents of the cage, which
consist of the siftings or riddlings of the lighter
kinds of wood charcoal. The apparatus is attached to
the face by an elastic band passing over the crown of
the head and strings tying behind, as in the case of
the ordinary respirator. The important agent in this
instrument is the charcoal, which has so remarkable
a power of absorbing and destroying irritating and
otherwise irrespirable and poisonous gases or vapors
that, armed with the respirator, spirits of hartshorn,
sulphuretted hydrogen, hydrosulphuret of ammonia and
chlorine may be breathed through it with impunity,
though but slightly diluted with air. This result,
first obtained by Dr. Stenhouse, has been verified by
those who have repeated the trial, among others by Dr.
Wilson, who has tried the vapors named above on himself
and four of his pupils, who have breathed them with
impunity. The explanation of this remarkable property
of charcoal is two-fold. It has long been known to
possess the power of condensing into its pores gases
and vapors, so that if freshly prepared and exposed to
these, it absorbs and retains them. But it has scarcely
been suspected till recently, when Dr. Stenhouse
pointed out the fact, that if charcoal be allowed
to absorb simultaneously such gases as sulphuretted
hydrogen and air, the oxygen of this absorbed and
condensed air rapidly oxidizes and destroys the
accompanying gas. So marked is this action, that if
dead animals be imbedded in a layer of charcoal a few
inches deep, instead of being prevented from decaying
as it has hitherto been supposed that they would be by
the supposed antiseptic powers of the charcoal, they
are found by Dr. Stenhouse to decay much faster, whilst
at the same time, no offensive effluvia are evolved.
The deodorizing powers of charcoal are thus established
in a way they never have been before; but at the
same time it is shown that the addition of charcoal
to sewage refuse lessens its agricultural value
contemporaneously with the lessening of odor. From
these observations, which have been fully verified, it
appears that by strewing charcoal coarsely powdered to
the extent of a few inches, over church-yards, or by
placing it inside the coffins of the dead, the escape
of noisome and poisonous exhalations may be totally
prevented. The charcoal respirator embodies this
important discovery. It is certain that many of the
miasma, malaria and infectious matters which propagate
disease in the human subjects, enter the body by the
lungs, and impregnating the blood there, are carried
with it throughout the entire body, which they thus
poison. These miasma are either gases and vapors or
bodies which, like fine light dust, are readily carried
through the air; moreover, they are readily destroyed
by oxidizing agents, which convert them into harmless,
or at least non-poisonous substances, such as water,
carbonic acid and nitrogen. There is every reason,
therefore, for believing that charcoal will oxidize
and destroy such miasma as effectually as it does
sulphuretted hydrogen or hydrosulphuret of ammonia, and
thus prevent their reaching and poisoning the blood.
The intention accordingly is that those who are exposed
to noxious vapors, or compelled to breathe infected
atmospheres, shall wear the charcoal respirator,
with a view to arrest and destroy the volatile
poisons contained in these. Some of the non-obvious
applications of the respirator were then referred to:

“1. Certain of the large chemical manufacturers in
London are now supplying their workmen with the
charcoal respirators as a protection against the more
irritating vapors to which they are exposed.

“2. Many deaths have occurred among those employed
to explore the large drains and sewers of London
from exposure to sulphuretted hydrogen, etc. It may
be asserted with confidence that fatal results from
exposure to the drainage gases will cease as soon as
the respirator is brought into use.

“3. In districts such as the Campagna of Rome, where
malaria prevails and to travel during night or to
sleep in which is certainly followed by an attack of
dangerous and often fatal ague, the wearing of the
respirator even for a few hours may be expected to
render the marsh poison harmless.

“4. Those, who as clergymen, physicians or legal
advisers, have to attend the sick-beds of sufferers
from infectious disorders, may, on occasion, avail
themselves of the protection afforded by Dr.
Stenhouse’s instrument during their intercourse with
the sick.

“5. The longing for a short and decisive war has led
to the invention of ‘a suffocating bombshell,’ which
on bursting, spreads far and wide an irrespirable or
poisonous vapor; one of the liquids proposed for the
shell is the strongest ammonia, and against this it
is believed that the charcoal respirator may defend
our soldiers. As likely to serve this end, it is at
present before the Board of Ordnance.

“Dr. Wilson stated, in conclusion, that Dr. Stenhouse
had no interest but a scientific one in the success of
the respirators. He had declined to patent them, and
desired only to apply his remarkable discoveries to the
abatement of disease and death. Charcoal had long been
used in filters to render poisonous water wholesome; it
was now to be employed to filter poisonous air.”