Not only lunch, but also explosives (no Haber-Bosch process, no WWI)!
Yes, Haber was the brains behind the German CW programme from 1915 on - see
The Poisonous Cloud... by his son LF Haber (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986).
Thank goodness for activated charcoal!
In doing this work Haber snr became the founding father of inhalation
toxicology - a recent journal issue has been devoted to this aspect of his
work - Toxicology 2000 Aug 14;149(1).
Before fleeing Germany, Haber snr also worked on iron metabolism - the
Haber-Weiss reaction (iron catalysed conversion of superoxide radical anion
+ hydrogen peroxide to oxygen + hydroxyl radical + hydroxyl ion) is him too.
Yes - I don't know of a connection with the body surface area work and CW.
American troops suffered badly from 'gas' in 1917, the head of the embryonic
US Chemical Warfare Service being told to 'to get the hell over to St Omer
and learn gas' or somesuch.
Please forgive the history lesson - it is Christmas (well, not far off).
Best wishes
Bob Flanagan
-----Original Message-----
From: Les Culank [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 29 December 2000 11:59
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Body surface area nomograms and formulae etc
Correct first guess. New Yorker Eugene Dubois wrote a long series of
papers with various collaborators on metabolic rates in clinical
investigation. This paper however was co-authored with a Delafield Dubois
of Vermont - ?? nepotism??
(I suspect the poisoner you are thinking of would be Fritz Haber, he who
got the Nobel for converting hot air into Lunch, and who ventured out of
Berlin that year to supervise & measure his fumes on the Somme battlefield.)
Yours again, Les
>Dear Friends
>
>Obviously BSA measurement date from the Great War, not just before WWII as
>I suspected. Were the authors American -- most likely -- or French or
>even French Canadians? Was it a new way of calculating the dose of poison
>gas?
>
>Happy New Year!
>
>Lars
>
>-----Original Message-----
>From: Les Culank [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
>Sent: 29 December 2000 11:05
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: Re: Body surface area nomograms and formulae etc
>
>
>Not an answer to your question, but you may find interest & perhaps insight
>from reading the much-quoted Dubois+Dubois 1916 paper, Arch Intern Med vol
>17, p 863
>
>Seasonal good wishes,
>
>Les Culank
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