It was first made by Guthrie, an Englishman, in 1860, and
rediscovered by a German chemist, Victor Meyer, in 1886, but he found it
so dangerous to work with that he abandoned the investigation. Nobody
else cared to take it up, for nobody could see any use for it. So it
remained in innocuous desuetude, a mere name in "Beilstein's
Dictionary," together with the thousands of other organic compounds that
have been invented and never utilized. But on July 12, 1917, the British
holding the line at Ypres were besprinkled with this villainous
substance. Its success was so great that the Germans henceforth made it
their main reliance and soon the Allies followed suit. In one offensive
of ten days the Germans are said to have used a million shells
containing 2500 tons of mustard gas.
The making of so dangerous a compound on a large scale was one of the
most difficult tasks set before the chemists of this and other
countries, yet it was successfully solved. The raw materials are
chlorine, alcohol and sulfur. The alcohol is passed with steam through
a vertical iron tube filled with kaolin and heated.
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