GAS WARFARE ON COLDS.

Auckland Star, Volume LV, Issue 114, 15 May 1924, Page 8

GAS WARFARE ON COLDS.

AN AMERICAN EXPERIMENT.

Poison, gas is being tried on the Senate of the United. States. The Chemical Warfare Service supplies the gas, the Senate survives and thrives under the treatment. The only fatalities are among the maleficent germs that seek to pasture themselves in senatorial throats and lungs to the detriment of the health of that body. Every day from 11 to 12 the room of the Senate Committee on Appropriations is turned into a gas chamber, and into it walk fearlessly the leading orators of both the Senate and the Huose who happen to be suffering from colds, coughs, or other impairment of the vocal and respiratory organs. The gas is turned on and they remain in it for an hour or so, engaged in reading or conversation until the time for the treatment has expired.

The gas used is chlorine, the same as that used in the historic first gas attack of the Germans at Ypres in 1915. The differences is in concentration. The Germans used the pure gas. For use against senatorial colds it is diluted to something like one part of chlorine to from 100,000 to 130,000 parts of air. In this dilution the gas is barely perceptible, and after a few minutes exposure to it, the patients are said not to notice it at all. Its effect when so diluted it to kill the bacteria in the respiratory organs without causing any congestion or irritation.

Many senators and representatives have taken the treatment for colds and have testified as to its efficacy. Those who take an hour or so of gas treatment daily are free from such complaints, while nearly all those already affected with colds find themselves speedily improved by the use of the chlorinated air.