NEARLY A TRAGEDY.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 19500, 8 June 1925, Page 10

NEARLY A TRAGEDY.

SCIENTIST’S NARROW ESCAPE. TRAPPED IN GAS CHAMBER. While experimenting with Lewisite, the "as that was to have been used to end tiie war had the Gormans not signed the Armistice, Professor Harold Maxwell-Lefroy has had a narrow escape from death. He is professor of entomology at the Imperial College ol Science and Technology at South Kensington. The gas with which he was experimenting in his special laboratory there is odourless, and it was only by the merest accident that iio felt himself being overcome and made his escape. According to his own version of the affair. Professor Lcfroy was experimenting for the extinction of dies by spraying them with the gas. Ho knew that it could not be used as a spray in the ordinary way, but ho was keen to know what effect it would have on them. . . For the purpose of such experiments the professor has a> fly-farm on the roof. He hat] brought a number of the insects down and was in the closed-up laboratory with them, when suddenly ho felt that his lungs were being filled with gas. He had been so engrossed in watching the effect of the poison on the flies that ho had forgotten till about his own safety. Professor Lofroy shouted to two men who we.ro in the next room to leave at Once, us there was a danger that the gas might get through the door and harm thorn. Ho then tried to open the safety window, but the cord broke. When ho got out into the corridor, not a moment too soon, ho was seen to bo looking very ill, and was at once taken downstairs, where doctors administered oxygen, which revived him very soon. The professor declares that, had he remained in the room another few minutes ho would most certainly have mot his death. As it was, he was on the point of collapse. Ilis lungs were burned by the gas, and it will be some time before they recover. The extraordinary thing is that the flies were not affected in any way. The professor went back to the chamber after ho had been brought round, and found the insects very much alive. The gas, while a very effective mankiller, is not an insecticide. It is a slowpoisoning gas, and is not lachrymal, and, according to Professor Lefroy, if any of it was dropped from an aeroplane people would walk about inhaling it without actually knowing that they were doing so. Death would follow later from burned lungs or pneumonia.