Gas Therapy

Experiments in applying various types of poison gases used in the war to the treatment of respiratory diseases; have multiplied. The use of chlorine as a preventive of influenza at the University of Arkansas has been described (TIME, April 14).

Now experts of the Chemical Warfare Service, experimenting at Edgewood Arsenal, near Baltimore, have had striking results with chlorine in very dilute quantities as a preventive of influenza, pneumonia and common colds. By accident it was discovered that workers in departments where chlorine was made were immune to these diseases, although elsewhere 10 to 20% of the arsenal workers were infected. A slight leakage of the gas was believed to be the cause of the discovery.

Lieutenant Colonel Edward B. Vedder, of the Army Medical Corps, found that guinea pigs inoculated with tuberculosis bacilli and a concentration of mustard gas did not develop the disease although other " control" animals, without the gas, did so.

Dr. P. Nolan, of the Pennsylvania State Tuberculosis Clinic, Jeannette, Pa., has had apparently successful cures for pulmonary tuberculosis through inhaling fumes from a combination of carbon and calcium. The clue to this treatment he found in the low tuberculosis deathrate of Pittsburgh.