Evening Republican, Volume 22, Number 210, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 30 August 1919 — MUSTARD GAS NOTHING NEW [ARTICLE]

MUSTARD GAS NOTHING NEW

Discovered in 1886. Chemist* at Once Recognized Its Awful Possibilities . in Warfare. .-

How easy a statement given credence been use origina ting apparently in an authoritative source may be totally wrong and yet acquire a standing which subsequent explanation may nut affect Is Illustrated in connection with an assertion concerning Dr. Hugo Schweitzer, said to have been a part of German propaganda in the United States. The assertion was that Doctor Schweitzer- employed, financed and guided a Doctor Scheele, who, at Bogota, N. J., in 1913, discovered the deadly mustard - gas, the formula for which was immediately transmitted to the German government through Von Fa pen whenthe war opened. Occupying a place in what is to be a semiofficial brief to congress, its accuracy would ordinarily remain unimpeached, yet according to a former federal 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 dis-, covered 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 td chemists and has been since its discovery by Meyer. Although given the name of mustard gns 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 188'6 is widely read and said by chemists to be on. the shelves of every chemical library. Hence, whatever Doctor Schweitzer did for Doctor Scheele and whatever Doctor 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.