Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 202, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 21 August 1919 — MUSTARD GAS NOTHING NEW [ARTICLE]

MUSTARD GAS NOTHING NEW

Discovered in 1886, Chemists at Once Recognized Its Awful Possibilities in Warfare. How easy a statement given credence because originating apparently in an authoritative source may be totally wrong and yet acquire a standing which subsequent explanation may. not affect is illustrated in connection with an assertion concerning Dr. Hugo Schweitzer, said to have been a part of German propaganda in th# United States. The assertion was that Doctor Schweitzer employed, financed and guided a Doctor Scheele, who, at Bogoto, N. J., in 1913, discovered the deadly mustard gas, the formula for which was immediately transmitted to the German government through Von I'apen when the war opened. Occupying a place in what is to be a semiofficial brief to congress, its accuracy woidd ordinarily remain unimpeached, yet according to a former federaJ war chemist and professor of chemistry, the statement is completely wrong in its main feature. Doctor Schweitzer may have employed, financed and guided Doctor Scheele for some reason, but not because the younger man had just discovered mustard gas, for that was the work of Victor Meyer, a chemist of Heidelberg, in 1886, or 33 years ago. and 28 years before the world war began. The gas is generally known to chemists and has been since its discovery by Meyer. Although given the name of mustard gas during the war it has been recognized by chemists since 1886 as dichlordiethyl-sulphide and the has been recognized by chemists since methods, statement of the gas’ composition and a remarkably complete investigation and description of its terrible physiological effects published The chemical journal furnishing the news of the discovery in 1886 is widely read and said by chemists to be on the shelves T of every chemical library. Hence, whatever Doctor Schweitzer did for Doctor Scheele and whatevotDoctor Scheele may have done for the German government he did not discover mustard gas in 1913 and transmit its formula to the authorities at Berlin. Yet there are probably few Americans who are not firmly convinced that the discovery of mustard gas was coincident with the world war.