Paul Julian Weindling
- Published in print:
- 2000
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198206910
- eISBN:
- 9780191677373
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198206910.003.0025
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Confident in an imminent German victory in 1918, Prussia's medical department planned elaborate sanitary measures on the extended frontiers. The returning troops and civilians were to undergo a ...
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Confident in an imminent German victory in 1918, Prussia's medical department planned elaborate sanitary measures on the extended frontiers. The returning troops and civilians were to undergo a rigorous medical regime of smallpox vaccination, delousing, disinfection of clothing and possessions, and twenty-eight days' quarantine at a border station, followed by medical examination for tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases on arrival at their final destination. Demobilization, the realignment of borders, and population transfers generated immense sanitary upheavals. German bacteriologists accused the Poles of destroying the German epidemiological defences, and of mounting a crude form of human biological warfare — by deporting ethnic Germans who were infected with typhus into Germany without any effort to delouse them. After World War I, hydrocyanic acid gas was deployed for pest control. Cremation and Zyklon gas were components of a new state-regulated and technological approach to public health, which conserved natural and financial resources.Less
Confident in an imminent German victory in 1918, Prussia's medical department planned elaborate sanitary measures on the extended frontiers. The returning troops and civilians were to undergo a rigorous medical regime of smallpox vaccination, delousing, disinfection of clothing and possessions, and twenty-eight days' quarantine at a border station, followed by medical examination for tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases on arrival at their final destination. Demobilization, the realignment of borders, and population transfers generated immense sanitary upheavals. German bacteriologists accused the Poles of destroying the German epidemiological defences, and of mounting a crude form of human biological warfare — by deporting ethnic Germans who were infected with typhus into Germany without any effort to delouse them. After World War I, hydrocyanic acid gas was deployed for pest control. Cremation and Zyklon gas were components of a new state-regulated and technological approach to public health, which conserved natural and financial resources.
Scott Christianson
- Published in print:
- 2010
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780520255623
- eISBN:
- 9780520945616
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520255623.003.0006
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
In 1929, Nevada prison officials tore down the original death house and built a more elaborate structure using convict labor. In response to the safety concerns posed by the first lethal gassing, the ...
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In 1929, Nevada prison officials tore down the original death house and built a more elaborate structure using convict labor. In response to the safety concerns posed by the first lethal gassing, the designers had devised a sealed compartment to fit inside the building. Given all of the problems with employing liquid cyanide and the crude gas-delivery system used in the first execution, Nevada authorities tried to be more careful in selecting the type of lethal gas they would employ in future executions. The newest and most potent form of cyanide gas in the United States came from Germany. The product was called Zyklon. Nevada's shiny new gas chamber was inaugurated on June 2, 1930, on Bob White, who had been condemned for killing a fellow gambler at Elko. In the face of new refinements in gas-chamber design and fumigation, other states also began to consider switching to gas. One of them was Arizona, which amended its constitution to provide for the death penalty to be inflicted by administering lethal gas.Less
In 1929, Nevada prison officials tore down the original death house and built a more elaborate structure using convict labor. In response to the safety concerns posed by the first lethal gassing, the designers had devised a sealed compartment to fit inside the building. Given all of the problems with employing liquid cyanide and the crude gas-delivery system used in the first execution, Nevada authorities tried to be more careful in selecting the type of lethal gas they would employ in future executions. The newest and most potent form of cyanide gas in the United States came from Germany. The product was called Zyklon. Nevada's shiny new gas chamber was inaugurated on June 2, 1930, on Bob White, who had been condemned for killing a fellow gambler at Elko. In the face of new refinements in gas-chamber design and fumigation, other states also began to consider switching to gas. One of them was Arizona, which amended its constitution to provide for the death penalty to be inflicted by administering lethal gas.
