Weapon of Self Destruction

Joel Vilensky. Dew of Death: The Story of Lewisite, America ’s World War I Weapon of Mass Destruction. Bloomington , IN : Indiana University Press, 2005. xxiii + 210 pp. $24.95.

Reviewed by Neil Gussman

Almost 100 years have passed since the first large-scale use of chemical weapons in modern warfare. The chemical of choice for the German gas attack at Ypres, Belgium, in 1915 was chlorine gas, but as World War I progressed, the combatants developed new and more deadly chemical weapons. At war’s end a program was underway in the United States to develop a chemical weapon that would be hailed as the deadliest in history. The weapon was never used by the U.S. Army in combat and probably would not have been effective if it was, but its story opens a window on wartime science and presents a cautionary reminder that weapons sometimes harm only those who would wield them.

The story of lewisite, recounted in Joel Vilensky ’s Dew of Death, begins in 1903 when Father Julius Arthur Nieuwland mixed acetylene and arsenic trichloride during the course of his Ph.D. research at Catholic University of America. The resulting fumes nearly killed him. Fifteen years later a commissioned American chemist, Captain Winford Lee Lewis, was referred to Nieuwland’s thesis. Lewis expanded Nieuwland’s work and developed the organic arsenic compound that would bear his name. The agent showed great promise as a chemical weapon in animal testing, killing dogs with a deadly effectiveness. The unfortunate canine subjects were not lewisite’s only victims. No one died at the secret U.S. Army production site at Willoughby , Ohio , but accidental exposure caused excruciating blisters in several plant workers.

The American lewisite program was top secret, so the U.S. Chemical Warfare Service believed they were alone in developing lewisite and were hopeful that the weapon could expedite an end to the conflict in Europe. In a postwar exhibit at the Department of the Interior, lewisite was labeled “the deadliest poison ever.” A New York Times article claimed that 10 airplanes carrying lewisite “would have wiped out . . . every vestige of life . . . in Berlin .” The Washington Post reported “one day’s output of the [U.S. Army’s] lewisite plant was sufficient to kill all four million inhabitants of Manhattan .”

The postwar propaganda was more indicative of American hubris than military reality. Germany , which dominated the prewar chemical industry, had also synthesized and tested lewisite, dismissing it as a possible chemical weapon because of its quick degradation in the presence of water. The British naval blockade in World War I cut off the U.S. supply of German dyes and other chemicals. Separated from its major supplier, the United States was forced to produce its own chemical products, a development that would facilitate the postwar growth of its chemical industry. The story of lewisite fits in this context as an illustration of the potential of the homegrown American chemical enterprise. By the end of World War I the U.S. Army was making lewisite at the rate of at least several tons per day. It is likely that many tons of lewisite and lewisite-contaminated equipment were buried in and around Willoughby as well as near Catholic University and American University , where Lewis and his team did much of their testing and development work.

The horrors of World War I made even military leaders averse to using chemical weapons. As in World War I the only lewisite casualties in World War II were plant workers who made the poison and soldiers who “volunteered” to test the weapons. The combatants in World War II refrained from using chemical weapons in major military operations, but they built up stockpiles of these weapons in case the other side used them. These stockpiles have been buried, dumped at sea, or are still waiting to be neutralized and disposed of. Japan, China , the United States , Canada , Russia , and other countries are still coping with poisoned citizens and lewisite-blighted ground even today.

Lewisite has also left a positive legacy. During World War II researchers at Oxford University developed an antidote that became known as British antilewisite (BAL). BAL has been very effective in the treatment of metal poisoning and nervous disorders. Joel Vilensky , a professor in the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology at Indiana University School of Medicine, became interested in lewisite as he researched the use of BAL to treat Wilson’s disease, a hereditary illness that results in the excessive accumulation of copper in tissues. His curiosity has led to an interesting, provocative, and frightening book that will have an important place in the popular literature of chemical warfare.