CHEMICAL WARFARE EXPERIMENTS

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 90, Issue 94, 24 April 1946, Page 5

CHEMICAL WARFARE EXPERIMENTS

BRITAIN MADE PROGRESS SCIENTISTS WERE THEIR OWN “GUINEA PIGS” Recd. 6 p.m. London, April 23. British scientists were their own “guinea pigs” for experiments in chemical warfare, says the ‘‘Daily Mail.’’ Dr. Hamilton McCombie, head of a Cambridge research team, offered himself for a test of one of his own discoveries, which blinded him for ten days. The discovery was a chemical, fluoro-phosphonate, which would have been Britain’s first reply if the Germans had introduced chemical warfare. Fluoro-phosphonate has no illeffects on its victims for three or four days; then temporary loss of vision develops p'ainlessly, due to contraction of the pupils of the eye. Old people recover after two or three days and young people take twice or ” three times as long.

Dr. McCombie, after recent visits to Germany, expressed the opinion that British respirators would have given adequate protection against anything the Germans had.