An atlas of gas poisoning

This is not a book in any conventional sense. It is a clinical record of horror, produced by British medical authorities during the First World War when chemical warfare transformed the battlefield into something from nightmare. The Medical Research Committee compiled this atlas to help medical officers recognize, diagnose, and treat the devastating effects of phosgene and mustard gas - weapons that attacked lungs, skin, eyes, and airways with unprecedented cruelty. The illustrations and notes document what these gases did to young men: the pulmonary edema of phosgene, the blistering and blindness of mustard gas, the slow drowning in fluid as lungs failed. This was the medical establishment's attempt to understand and catalog a new kind of suffering. It endures as a primary document of one of the most terrible chapters in warfare history, a window into how medicine grappled with industrial-scale chemical violence. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the history of toxicology, military medicine, or the evolution of chemical weapons.