DEADLY GAS WAR ON VERMIN?

Taranaki Daily News, 24 November 1934, Page 15 (Supplement)

DEADLY GAS WAR ON VERMIN?

Another Way For Science To Aid Humanity

NEW and deadly gas attack may be launched on a wide front against bugs. The use of hydrocyanic acid gas to carry out such a war was discussed by Mr J. Higginbotham (Manchester) .at the Sanitary Inspectors Association conference at Southport, England, recently. “Hydrocyanic acid gas is efficient and can safely be applied when the requisite precautions are taken,” he said.

He warned them that the gas was the most toxic known and that the greatest care would have to be exercised in its use.

Sir Leonard Hill, however, thought that it was not quite correct to say that it was the most toxic gas known. It had been rejected by us as a war gas after “a great scientist” had breathed it in a sealed chamber and survived.

Sir Leonard gave other examples of the courage of scientists. “We have found,” he said, “that oxygen becomes a poison under certain concentration. “Two of our researchers last ; year breathed oxygen in a sub-

marine until one got slight convulsions and the other man had a severe epileptic fit. “A great friend of mine lost his life while investigating typhus fever. “He was tracing the action of the body louse. He placed the lice in a little pill-box and had one of these fastened to his body, so that he produced his experimental lice by breeding them on his own body,”