FIRST CAS MASK

Nelson Evening Mail, Volume LXXII, 28 January 1939, Page 6

FIRST CAS MASK

DEVISED IN 1854 VALUABLE IDEA OVERLOOKED (By Air Mail— HpeclAl Ccrreapourtantl LONDON, 31st December. English people, who have thought a lot about gas masks in 1938, were surprised to hear that the first effective gas mask was made as long ago as 1854. The inventor was a Dr. Stenhouse. According to the Imperial Institute, South Kensington, the doctor’s idea was initiated when he learned that freshly prepared charcoal has the power of absorbing the noxious odours arising from puterfaction. He invented a relatively simple mouth and nose mask containing a charcoal filter. The respirator was held in position by an elastic band passing round the back of the head. It was designed “to absorb and destroy any miasmata or infectious particles present in the air in the case of fever and cholera hospitals, and of districts infected with ague, yellow fever and similar diseases. “It is a pity” the Imperial Institute comments “that so much valuable work should have been overlooked in the period of emergency which arose some 60 odd years later”—the early part of the Great War.