h poisons) (18). To the Roman offended by well poisoning, fair play necessitated armed combat; poisoning was more in keeping with assassination. The effectiveness of early germ warfare proved itself, and during medieval times, soldiers sometimes threw bodies of plague victims over the walls of besieged cities, or, as in the case of the Romans, into water wells. During the French and Indian wars
(1689 1763), blankets used by smallpox victims were given to the Indians in the hope they would spread the disease (Lussier 397).
Chemicals in war also have a long history. The effectiveness of poisoned arrows has long been recognized, and, as John Cookson and Judith Nottingham point out in their A Survey of Chemical and Biological Warfare, "as early as 400 BC, the Spartans employed the gas sulphur dioxide (obtained by burning sulphur with pitch) during sieges of Athenian cities" (5). The authors further recount that contemporary chemical warfare began in 1914 during World War I, with the French use of tear gas grenades against the Germans, who retaliated with tear gas artillery shells (5).
The term chemical warfare usually refers to the use of chemical agents, both lethal and nonlethal, which attack the human organs by paralyzing the nervous system (nerve gases). Chemical agents may induce temporary blindness, deafness, paralysis, nausea, or vomiting. They may cause severe burns to skin, eyes, or lungs, or stifle respiration. Also included are chemical defoliants and herbicides for military purposes, such as those used in the Viet Nam War. The nerve gases, or anticholinesterase compounds, are the most lethal. They are odorless, colorless, and give no immediate, easily detectable indication.
Consider what happened at Bhopal, India, at the Union Carbide Pesticide Plant. When a 1984 accident released methylisocyanate into the air, five thousand people died. McDermott gives the mayor of Bhopal's reaction:
'I can say that I...