J. B. S. Callinicus. In Defence of Chemical Warfare.

by HALDANE

£1,000 · Offered by Henry Sotheran Ltd

‘Chemical Warfare Will Not Assume Importance Until the Outbreak of the Next Serious War’ HALDANE, J. B. S. Callinicus. In Defence of Chemical Warfare. London: Kegan Paul . 1925. Small 8vo. Publisher’s glazed black boards with printed labels to front board and spine, in the original printed dust-jacket; pp. [viii, with initial blank], 84, [4 (blank)]; small chip to dust-jacket at head of spine and small inkspot to front cover, slight foxing to top- and fore-edges, the odd spot internally; a very good copy. Uncommon first edition, first printing, rare in the dust-jacket, of this curious and controversial work by one of the twentieth century’s great geniuses, polymaths and scientific minds, a cult figure since the 1920s. John Burdon Sanderson Haldane (1892–1964), without any higher scientific degree, became one of the leading geneticists and lecturers at Cambridge and coined the terms ‘clone’ and ‘cloning’ as understood in the modern sense. A committed Marxist, his influence reached from Aldous Huxley ( Brave New World ) to science fiction writers such as Arthur C. Clarke, who called Haldane ‘perhaps the most brilliant science populariser of his generation’. Writing in the aftermath of the First World War (in which he served as a captain), Haldane here examines the fifteen different types of poisonous gas used during the Great War and discusses their effects: ‘Some soldiers poisoned by these substances had to be prevented from committing suicide; others temporarily went raving m

• Binding: Hardcover

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