From an ice-coated sun deck on a suburban Evanston, Ill. home, a half-paralyzed chemist last week slipped and fell to his death. Thus prosaically ended the life of Winford Lee Lewis, 64, who invented one of the deadliest weapons of chemical warfare: lewisite.
Working at Catholic University in 1917, Lewis compounded lewisite from a poisonous black tar, produced it in quantity and turned it over to the Army's Chemical Warfare Section. A lewisite plant was erected at Willoughby, Ohio, surrounded by a high fence and heavy guards. So secret was the process that no workers were allowed to leave the premises....
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