War Chemical Committee

It was at this point - in February 1916 - that the General Staff decided to create a War-Chemical Committee to coordinate the production of masks as well as gas warfare and the instmction of troops. The War Minister supported the creation of this new organization and on 16 February 1916, wrote to Tsar Nicholas n stating that it was unsuitable to order the Mining Institute mask when it was clear that the Zelinskii-Kummant mask was superior. Moreover, the minister argued that the army had not yet received a satisfactory gas mask because there was no unifying organization. The Tsar approved the creation of the War-Chemical Committee on 2 March 1916. ... 

However, Prince Oldenburg was unsuccessful, and on 19 March, the War Minister made a resolution to immediately place an order for the Zelinskii type of gas mask in a quantity sufficient to provide them for all of the army, and for the immediate provision of the charcoal for [these masks]. The new War-Chemical Committee of the General Staff soon placed orders for three million Zelinskii-Kummant masks with the Central WIC, and for 800,000 with the All-Russian Union of Zemstvos. ... 

However, as often was the case in Russia, the creation of a new Chemical Committee (CC) in the GAU did not mean the abolition of the War-Chemical Committee of the General Staff. The General Staff had created a Council for the War-Chemical Committee, and this continued to function. While the CC had day-to-day control of the production of chemicals and products, the Council for the War-Chemical Committee retained oversight over the CC. ° The relationship between the two organizations is not clear, although Ipat ev obviously saw the Council for the War-Chemical Committee as an unwarranted intmsion into his sphere of influence. ... 

Ipatieff, op. cit. note 26, 221. It also is not clear how long the Council for the War-Chemical Committee continued to function. 

In a series of experiments conducted by the War Office Chemical Committee on Explosives in 1891, it was conclusively shown that considerable quantities of cordite may be burnt away without explosion. A number of wooden cases, containing 500 to 600 lbs. each of cordite, were placed upon a large bonfire of wood, and burned for over a quarter of an hour without explosion. At Woolwich in 1892 a brown paper paeket containing ten cordite cartridges was fired into with a rifle (.303) loaded with cordite, without the explosion of a single one of them, which shows its insensibility to shoek. 

In the summer of 1916, the CC set up its laboratory. In October, G. V. Khlopin was appointed head. There, he worked with I. I. Zhukov, N. T. Prokof ev, and M. V. Tarle to investigate the absorbing properties and the influence of moisture on charcoal. One of the laboratory s successes was Prokofev s development in the autumn of 1916 of an improved type of wet mask. This mask received the name Chemical Committee and was given to troops in late 1916." Scientists at other laboratories continued to share in the work. One such was the laboratory of the Central Scientific-Technical Laboratory of the War Ministry, headed by I. I. Andreev, whose work was conducted mainly during the second half of 1916 and the first half of 1917." ... 

Evaluation of United Kingdom and American equipment was accomplished more readily than interchangeability. In April 1S>44 the Advisory Committee on the Effectiveness of Chemical Warfare Materiel in the Tropics, consisting of representatives of the CWS, the Canadian Field Experimental Station, and the British Army, was established to provide operational data for planning chemical warfare in the tropical theaters of war. This committee was served by the Project Co-ordination Staff which evaluated chemical warfare tests carried out in the United States, Great Britain, Canada, Australia, and India. The staff considered all factors involved in the use of chemical weapons, including weather and terrain, protective devices, and weapons and munitions. 

And expand it did, as the Wolff Committee report evolved into more concrete plans. Major General William Creasy played the role of fundraiser, mesmerizing Congress into believing that war without death might be more than a chemical pipedream. With funds and the go-ahead, volunteer studies began to proliferate. 

Harmonization of pharmacopeial standards as a practical matter began at the International Congresses of Pharmacy between 1865 and 1910 [2], but the first formal attempt can be traced to 1902. Both USP President Horatio C. Wood, M.D., and Frederick M. Power, Ph.D., an American chemist of the Wellcome Chemical Research Laboratories of London, were appointed by the U.S. Secretary of State as delegates to represent the United States government at the International Conference for the Unification of the Formulae for Heroic Medicines, a conference of 19 countries from Europe and North America [3]. The second conference occurred in 1918. The 3rd in 1925 was attended by 31 countries from all continents except Asia and Australia. They drafted a new International Convention, which came in force in 1929. It revised the 1902 agreements on 77 heroic medicines and introduced the concept of maximum dose. It also requested that the League of Nations create a permanent secretariat of pharmacopeias [4]. Andrew G. DuMez, Ph.D., represented the USP, and was officially appointed by the U.S. Public Health Service to represent the United States at this conference [4,5]. An expert committee of the League of Nations planned a third conference for 1938, but it was never convened because of World War II [2]. 

---