the idea of chemical warfare in modern by wyndhamd. miles

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The Idea of Chemical Warfare in Modern TimesAuthor(s): Wyndham D. MilesSource: Journal of the History of Ideas, Vol. 31, No. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1970), pp. 297-304Published by: University of Pennsylvania PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2708553

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THE IDEA OF CHEMICAL WARFARE IN MODERN TIMES

BY WYNDHAMD. MILES

On April 22, 1915, the German army poised before Ypres released chlorine

gas from cylinders emplaced along the front lines and waited while gas was

carried by a steady breeze across No Man's Land toward the French posi-tions. French troops noticed the strange looking yellow cloud, but they did

not know what it was and they were not overly alarmed. Then the gas drifted

over the edge of the parapet into the trenches.andhell broke loose. Soldiers

dropped their rifles and staggered around coughing uncontrollably as their

windpipes tried to expel the gas. In seconds they had forgotten the war, their

enemies a few hundred yards away, and were clawing their way over the

back of the trench trying to reach fresh air. German troops advanced behind

the gas, punching a hole two miles wide and deep into Allied territory, taking

50 pieces of artillery and 70 machine guns. The French had been completely

and overwhelmingly surprised. And no wonder. This, for all practical pur-

poses, was the first chemical attack in warfare. Yet in 1915, when the attack

took place, the idea of warringwith chemicals was already a century old.'In discussing the idea of chemical warfare, I do not desire to go back

further than the "chemical revolution," as the period is called in the latter

quarter of the eighteenth century when the science of chemistry blossomed

out. Before that time there were incidents which might, by a stretch of view-

point, be called chemical warfare, but were so empirical in nature that I

prefer to disregard them. An example would be the employment in ancient

or medieval times of stink pots containing materials that burned with an

obnoxious odor. The people who prepared and used stink pots did not know

anything about the composition of the materials or of the smoke, nor did they

know anything of the principles of chemistry, and I think that it is rather far

fetched to refer to such episodes as chemical warfare. It seems preferable

to me to confine the term "chemical warfare" to the military application of

chemicals based on scientific principles.The earliest suggestion for chemical warfare that I am aware of came from

the British naval officer Thomas Cochrane (later Admiral Cochrane, Lord

Dundonald) in 1811.2 While Cochrane was on duty in the Mediterranean,

his ship put in at Sicily and the young officer took the opportunityto tour the

island. Sicily, at that time, was the world's chief supplier of sulfur, and

Cochrane visited the works where the yellow element was dug from the ground

and separated from dirt and rocks by sublimation. During the process con-

'Cf. among other sources, Rudolf Hanslian, Der deutsche Gasangrif bei Ypernam

22 April 1915.

2Cochrane's ideas on the use of sulfur dioxide are mentioned in a number of places,

including:Christopher Lloyd, Lord Cochrane, Seaman-Radical-Liberator (1947), 105

113;George Douglas and George D. Ramsay (eds.), The Panmure Papers (1908) 1, 340-

42.

297



298 WYNDHAM D. MILES

siderable sulfur was burned, forming sulfur dioxide gas. This gas has a sharp,

biting odor, is practically unbreathable, and causes anyone who inhales it

inadvertently to cough. The physiological effect of the gas made a deep im-

pression on Cochrane and brought to his alert mind the idea that burningsulfur could be used to drive troops from fortifiedpositions.

Cochrane worked out a plan to force Napoleon's troops from Toulon,

Flushing, and other ports by means of sulfur dioxide and sent the plan to the

Prince Regent in 1812. He suggested that the admiralty load several vessels

with alternate layers of sulfur and coal, convoy the ships to the enemy har-

bors, wait until the wind was blowing in the direction of the French fortifica-

tions, then anchor the ships close to shore and set them on fire. When the

sulfur dioxide gas had driven the French troops off, the British wouldsend

troops ashore to take over the abandoned positions.The British government appointed a committee to examine Cochrane's

plan. The members cautiously stated that the idea was so novel they could

not give a definite decision, but that they were dubious about the success of an

attack because there were so many uncontrollable factors such as wind, tide

and currents. Cochrane filed his plan away. One wonders what might have

happened if the British had adopted the idea and had gassed American troopswith sulfurdioxide duringthe War of 1812.

In 1846 Cochrane resubmitted his idea, but with the addition of a newfeature, a smoke screen to shield the sulfur ships. Again a government com-

mittee voted against it, saying that the use of sulfur dioxide would not be in

keeping with the rules of warfare and also that the British would not be able

to keep a monopoly on the idea once it had been employed.In 1854, during the Crimean War, Cochrane offered his idea once more.

He drew up plans for an operation against Cronstadt, using smoke ships to

protect the sulfur ships. An Ordnance Committee, on which sat the British

scientist Michael Faraday, called it a rash enterprise and doubted that the

smoke ships would provide a satisfactory screen. Faraday added that it wouldnot be difficultfor the enemy to devise respirators to protect their men.

The old admiral would not give up. He returned the next year with a planfor driving the Russians from Sevastopol. The government went through the

mechanics of studying it, but before anything could be done, the fortress had

fallen, and with it went Cochrane's last chance of introducing chemical war-

fare.

Aside from Cochrane's idea for chemical warfare, there are other points

in this story that are worth noting. Cochrane proposed to let the wind carrythe gas to the enemy; this was the method eventually used by Fritz Haber in

the successful chlorine attack of 1915. Cochrane proposed to throw up a smoke

screen to protect his sulfur vessels; smoke screens became a reality on the

battlefields of World War I. Faraday thought that an army receiving a gasattack would quickly develop protective respirators; the Germans procuredmasks before launching the gas attack at Ypres, and the Allies, although

caught unprotected by the first gas attack, quickly developed suitable masks.

Finally, at least a number of those who sat on the British committees felt

that gas was not allowable under the rules of warfare, a viewpoint that was to



MODERN IDEA OF CHEMICAL WARFARE 299

crop up again in the future. Cochrane's plan was not disclosed publicly until

the 1890's. Therefore others who came to the idea of chemical warfare did so

quite independently.The Crimean War, 1854-56, brought forth additional ideas for the mili-

tary use of chemicals. British chemist Lyon Playfair conceived the idea of em-

ploying shells filled with cacodyl cyanide against Russian naval vessels.

Cacodyl cyanide is an evil-smelling toxic organic compound containingarsenic. The cacodyl compounds were novel at that time and of considerable

interest to chemists because of their structure, and it is not surprising that

cacodyl cyanide came to Playfair's mind once he had hit on the idea of usingchemicals in battle. There is nothing unusual about the method that he pro-

posed for delivering the toxic compound to the enemy, but there is a touch ofingenuity in his suggestion to make the shells of a brittle metal so that theywould shatter when they struck the target and throw out the liquid cacodyl

cyanide. "Such a shell," Playfair wrote, "going between the decks of a shipwould render the atmosphere irrespirable and poison the men if they remained

at their guns."The War Department did not accept Playfair's idea, saying it was com-

parable to poisoning the enemy's water supply. Playfair's feelings about the

reasons for the rejection have been voiced, in effect, many times since: "There

was no sense in this objection. It is considered a legitimate mode of warfareto fill shells with molten metal which scatters among the enemy, and producesthe most frightful modes of death. Why a poisonous vapor which would kill

menwithout sufferingis to be considered illegitimate is incomprehensible."

Playfair's suggestion, like Cochrane's, was kept secret. Not until 1899 did

it come to light in Playfair's Memoirs.3 Like Cochrane's idea, therefore, it

could not have influenced other inventors who conceived the idea of gaswarfare. That ideas for chemical warfare were in the air during the Crimean

War may be seen from other writers, in addition to Lord Dundonald and

Playfair. An interesting example comes from the work of the chemist JohnStenhouse. Stenhouse began his career in the 1830's and, through his investi-

gations into industrial chemistry, built up a modest fortune. Around 1850 he

made some experiments on the absorptive power of charcoal. He learned that

charcoal would absorb large volumes of chlorine, hydrogen sulfide (the gas of

rotten eggs), and ammonia. Concerned with applications of chemistry, Sten-

house conceived several possible uses for absorbent charcoal. A facemask

filled with charcoal, for example, might be used by house painters to protect

themselves from the vapors that arose from paint solvents, by gunners incasemated batteries to protect themselves from gases generated by exploding

powder, and by travelers to protect themselves from miasmas in unhealthy

regions. He constructed at least two different masks and exhibited them at a

meeting of the Society of Arts in 1854.4

3Wemyss Reid, Memoirs and Correspondence of Lyon Playfair, first Lord Playfair

of St. Andrews (1899), 159-60.

4"0n the economical applications of charcoal to sanitary purposes," Proc., RoyalInstitution of Great Britain 2 (1854-58), 53-55. A woodcut showing a Stenhouse mask

may be seen in EdwardL. Youmans, Class-Book of Chemistry(1869), 217.




According to George Wilson, professor of technology at the Universityof Edinburgh, some chemical firms in London actually provided their work-

men with masks of Stenhouse's design, and Stenhouse submitted his mask to

the government as a possible defense against gases in warfare. "The longingfor a short and decisive war," wrote Wilson, "has led to the invention of a

suffocating bombshell; which on bursting, spreads far and wide an irrespirableor poisonous vapor; one of the liquids proposed for this shell is the strongest

ammonia, and against this it is believed that charcoal respirators may defend

our soldiers. As likely to serve this end it is at present before the Board of

Ordnance."5 I do not know what the Board said of Stenhouse's mask, but

I assume that its report is still extant within the British archives.

The invention of aprotective

maskby

Stenhouse recalls the remarks of

Michael Faraday, made while he was assessing Lord Dundonald's plan for

using sulfur dioxide, to the effect that an enemy would be able to devise a

respirator. I wonder if Faraday drew his conclusion from Stenhouse's work,with which he was probably familiar, or perhaps even. from talking with

Stenhouse or seeing his mask at the Bureau of Ordnance. We might note

that this idea for a gas mask was put forth more than half a century before gasmasks were actually used in battle.

Aside from What Wilson has told us of a proposed military application for

a gas mask, he mentioned another chemical that had been discussed for usein warfare, ammonia. Wilson did not mention the name of the person who putforward ammonia. Since ammonia was a common material, I suspect that

the person was a layman rather than a chemist. The latter would have been

acquainted with compounds and elements more toxic and less ordinary. The

means that our unknown person suggested for delivering ammonia was by

shell, the same means proposed by Lyon Playfair and at about the same time.

However, Wilson did not say how the shell was to disgorge its contents (per-

haps he did not know), whether by use of a small explosive charge (the World

War I method) or by casting the shell from a brittle alloy, as suggested by

Playfair. As to the agent proposed, ammonia, I have not seen its use sug-

gested elsewhere.

The American Civil War brought several more suggestions for chemical

warfare. On April 5, 1862, a citizen of New York City named John Doughtysent a letter to the War Department proposing that shells containing chlorine

be employed to drive Confederates from fortifications. Along with the letter

he sent a drawingof the proposed shell.

The above is a representation of a projective which I have devised to beused as a means for routing an entrenched enemy. Believing it to be new and

valuable, I send the War Department a brief description: Chlorine is a gas so

irritating in its effects upon the respiratory organs, that a small quantitydiffused in the atmosphere, produces incessant & uncontrollably violent

coughing. .- It is 212 times heavier than the atmosphere, and when sub-

jected to a pressure of 60 pounds to the inch, it is condensed into a liquid, its

volume being reduced many hundred times. A shell holding two or three

quarts,would therefore contain many cubic feet of the gas.

5Transactions,Royal Scottish Society of Arts 4 (1854), Appendix 0, 198.




If the shell should explode over the heads of the enemy, the gas would, byits great specific gravity, rapidly fall to the ground: the men could not dodgeit, and their first intimation of its presence would be by its inhalation, which

would most effectually disqualify every man for service that was within thecircle of its influence; rendering the disarming and capturing of them as cer-tain as though both their legs were broken.

To silence an enemy's guns or drive him from his entrenchments, it wouldbe only necessary to explode the shells over his head or on his windward side.If exploded in rapid succession over, or within a fort, evacuation or surrendercould not be delayed beyond fifteen minutes. Casemates & bomb-proofs wouldnot protect the men.

This kind of shell would, I think, in the present advanced state of military

engineering, be a very efficient means for wardingoff the attacks of iron-clad

vessels and steam rams; for, as to the steam ram, a ten inch gun that would

carry a shell containing a gallon or two of the liquid, would with ordinaryaccuracy, be able at the distance of 34 of a mile, to envelop him in an atmos-

phere that would cause his inmates to be more anxious about their own safetythan about the destruction of their enemy.

It may be asked if the gas which drove the enemy from his guns, would not

prevent the attacking party who used the gas, from taking possession of theabandoned position. I answer it would not: for, this shell does not like theChinese stink-pots, deposit a material emitting a deleterious gas lighter than

the atmosphere, but suddenly projects into the air, a free gas much heavierthan the atmosphere, which does its work as it descends to the earth, where itis soon absorbed.

Experiment alone can determine whether this shell has any practical merit.

Possibly, I overrate its value; but it must not be forgotten, that while it doesthe work of an ordinary shell, it also carries with it a force against whoseeffect the most skillful military engineering can not possibly make any ade-

quate provision.Doughty's idea for placing chemicals in artillery shells is similar to the

ideas of Playfair and of the unnamed person mentioned byWilson. Yet I

think it unlikely that Doughty could have learned of the earlier ideas. Play-fair's plan was still a secret, and Wilson's statement regarding a proposedchemical shell was in a place not likely to have been seen by Doughty.

Doughty may have got the germ of this idea for chemical warfare from

some person or source unknown to me (he mentions stink pots, which had

been known since antiquity, and this type of munition may have started his

trend of thought), but I have a feeling from the tone and detail of the letter

that Doughty was not indebtedto anyone for his plan.

We do not know how Doughty's suggestion was received by officers in theWar Department. The Government was constantly receiving proposals from

would-be inventors during the Civil War, and I imagine that Doughty's letter

was filed away and forgotten. It lay unnoticed in the multitude of old official

documents until recent times.6

Another Northerner who hit upon the idea of using toxic chemicals was

Forrest Shepherd of New Haven, Connecticut. Late in the war, when the

6Doughty'setter anddrawing re inthe files of the Office.of he Chiefof Ordnance,

NationalArchives.




siege of Petersburg was making headlines in the newspapers, Shepherd came

up with a plan for driving Confederates from their entrenchments by means

of hydrogen chloride. His idea, which he sent to the White House, is givenbelow:

President Lincoln, Respected and Honored Sir: I find that by minglingstrong sulphuric acid with strong hydrochloric, or muriatic acid on a broad

surface like a shovel or shallow pan, a dense white cloud is at once formed,and being slightly heavier than the atmosphere, rests upon the ground and is

high enough to conceal the operator behind it. This may easily be continued byadditional sprinkling of the two acids and a light breeze will waft it onward.When the cloud strikes a man it sets him to coughing, sneezing, etc., but doesnot kill

him,while it would

effectually preventhim from

firinga

gun,or if he

should fire, to aim at his object. It has occurred to me that Gen. Burnside,with his colored troops might, on a dark night, with a gentle breeze favorable,

surprise and capture the strongholds of Petersburg, or Fort Darling, perhaps,without loss or shedding of blood. I trust Your Excellency will excuse the

liberty of a son of a Revolutionary soldier, well-known to Hon. Sec. Chase,Prof. Silliman and Gov. Buckingham, and has the honor to be personally and

politicallyyours, Forrest Shepherd.

Shepherd was a well-known consulting geologist who had been Professor

of Economic Geology and Agricultural Chemistry at Western Reserve from1847 to 1856. The preparation of hydrogen chloride is a common exercise in

chemical education, and Shepherd had the facts for his idea in the back of

his mind many years before the flash of inspiration caused him to connect

them with warfare. Hydrogen chloride vapor probably would not have killed

Confederate soldiers, as Shepherd pointed out, but under ideal conditions it

might have driven them from their positions. Shepherd had hit upon the same

mode of employing a gas as had Lord Dundonald, by allowing the wind to

carry it to enemy entrenchments. Under the circumstances that Shepherd

suggests for an attack, that is, a night surprise, the use of the wind soundsmore practical and vastly more simple than the use of shells. What President

Lincoln thought of Shepherd's letter, if it got past his secretaries, I do not

know. At any rate it found its way into the government records and collected

dust until it was unearthed in 1933.7

In addition to the letters of Doughty and Shepherd, I have come across

mention of chemical warfare in periodicals of the Civil War period. This

leads me to believe that the idea was much more prevalent than we might

suppose. In 1862 an anonymous author published an article on incendiaryshells in the Scientific American. In the article the following sentence appears:"Several incendiary and asphyxiating shells have been invented for the pur-

pose of scattering liquid fire and noxious fumes around the space where they

explode.'8 Unfortunately for those of us who are interested in these matters,the writer did not make any further reference to these particular asphyxiating

shells, and we are left in the dark as to the name of their inventor, the pro-

7WashingtonEveningStar, Nov. 19, 1933,A13.

8"Destructive Fire Shells," Scientific American, new series, 6, (Jan. 11, 1862) 25.

Italics mine.




posed filling, and as to whether or not the invention was submitted to the

government.In the United States Service Magazine in 1864, one Captain E. C.

Boynton spoke of a glass hand grenade containing a toxic filling. "Whenalkarsine is distilled with strong chlorohydric acid," wrote Boynton, "and the

product digested in a vessel containing zinc, water, and carbonic acid, a

heavy oil liquid insoluble in water is produced, which takes fire the instant it

is brought in contact with the air. If this substance, termed Kacodyl, C4H6-As3, was confined in glass globes or bottles, and dropped in the deck of a

vessel, or thrust below, all the horrors of combustion and deadly arsenical

inhalations would be realized, beside which the terrors of Greek fire would

be contemptible."9 Up to this point we have mentioned shells and the windas methods of delivering toxic chemicals to the enemy. Boynton added

another method with his frangible grenades. It is not certain from the article

whether Boynton was discussing an idea or an actual experimental item, and

it is not possible to tell whether he was writing about his own brainchild or

about an idea that may have come to his attention, perhaps owing to some

position that he occupied in the armed forces.In an article in the British Popular Science Review, B. W. Richardson let

his imagination drift away from "Greek Fire," the subject of the article, to

chemical warfare:'1

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 pre-pared, could render Regent's Park, in an incredibly short space of time, utterlyuninhabitable;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 Sen-nacherib.

Richardson's conception of chemical warfare was general-not at allspecific as Lord Dundonald had been with his sulfur dioxide, Playfair with

cacodyl cyanide, Doughty with chlorine, and Shepherd with hydrogenchloride.

I have noticed one other mention of chemical warfare in connection with

the Civil War period. From the 1860's onward, there lived in Washington,D. C., a chemist named William C. Tilden who taught and who held postswith the federal government and in industry. After Tilden died in 1905, a

newspaper reporter made the following comment in Tilden's obituary: "Til-

den had a scheme for producing chemically a means of settling wars quicklyby making them terribly destructive. He is said to have interested General

Grant in this matter, and at the suggestion of the latter finally abandoned it,

because, as General Grant said, such a terrific agency for destroying human

life should not be permitted to come into use by the civilized nations of the

world."" I have not foundany mention of this episode in books on Grant.

9"Greek Fire and other Inflammables,' U.S. Service Magazine, Jan. 1864,50-54.'?"GreekFire: its ancient and modern history," 3 (1864), 164-77.

"Washington EveningStar (Aug. 6, 1905),6.




In the years between the "chemical revolution" and 1915, the number ofchemists in the United States and Europe certainly totalled more than onehundred thousand. These men were familiar with toxic compounds fromtheir student days onward. They read texts, references books, andjournals inwhich the physiological and physical properties of toxic substances werelisted. For these chemists it would have been a short step to the idea: employtoxic chemicals in warfare. Such an idea would have come to the mindmore readily during times of war. Undoubtedly there were chemists inaddition to those mentioned above who conceived the idea of chemical war-

fare many years before it became a reality in 1915.

National Institutesof Health, Bethesda, Md.

I N e w

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CharlesFourier asgenerallybeen studiedin only one or anotherof his variousroles,suchas thatof socialcritic,precurserf Marx,ortheoretician f the cooperativemove-ment;mostwritershavebeenunpreparedo admit,let aloneaccept,the totalityof histeaching.Fourier'shought is herefullyexamined or the firsttime in its own terms,not in termsof its possiblecontribution o a differentntellectualorientation. In two

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John Wilkins, 1614-1672An IntellectualBiographyBarbaraJ. Shapiro

This is the first modern biography of a remarkable Englishman-a man who was inturn, or in tandem, theologian, scientific experimenter, science-fiction writer, linguist,bishop, politician, and founding member of the Royal Society. Because he partici-patedso deeply nthe whole intellectual ifeof histime,it is fittingthatthis biography

should examine the major currents of philosophy, science, religion, and letters inseventeenth-century England. 1969 LC: 73-84042 320pages $9.50

A Z ~ f r o m California

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