Forgotten Soldiers

Historian Susan Smith talks to CBC Radio about the 100th anniversary of mustard gas and its link to the origins of chemotherapy.

Faculty of Arts - 12 July 2017

Today marks the 100th anniversary of the first use of mustard gas in war and the 75th anniversary of the origins of chemotherapy. CBC Radio talked to History and Classics professor Susan Smith this morning about the history behind these anniversaries and the links to the mustard gas experiments of World War II in a segment called "Forgotten Soldiers".

Listen to the full CBC interview here.

In March, the University of Alberta's Geoff McMaster talked to Susan Smith about her book on the subject,"Toxic Exposures: Mustard Gas and the Health Consequences of World War II in the United States":

"It's been 100 years since mustard gas first appeared as a weapon in the world, but its legacy is anything but ancient history. According to the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, there is evidence ISIS has been using the gas recently on Syrian citizens, contrary to international prohibitions on chemical warfare.

It is perhaps not a huge stretch to imagine terrorists or dictators resorting to such cruel weaponry. Harder to accept are the mustard gas tests inflicted by Allied forces on their own soldiers during the Second World War-as many as 60,000 (likely more) in the United States, 7,000 in Britain and 2,500 in Canada. Many of those Canadian tests were conducted in Alberta, at Experimental Station Suffield.

When medical historian Susan Smith first heard about the human experiments on CBC Radio in 2000, you might say it left her burning to investigate further. The result is a new book, Toxic Exposures, that sheds light on the whole noxious affair, accounting for the human and environmental costs of chemical warfare.

"It's quite appalling to consider the atrocities committed by Nazis in World War II (who conducted mustard gas experiments of their own)," said Smith. "It's considered evil science. But I was so struck by how this was a story of the good guys-the Allies. It was ethically astonishing and done on a huge scale."

Read the full story here.