DDT Is Born 33 



tests reveal unexpected limitations when used on a large 

 scale under actual field conditions. 



But DDT did not have to wait long to prove its worth. 

 In the year 1939, the potato crop of Switzerland was threat- 

 ened with devastation by an unwanted immigrant from the 

 United States — the Colorado potato beetle. Something had 

 to be done in a hurry, and something was done! _Asjl re- 

 sult of their experiments, Geigy felt that their new inseai- 

 cide might be the answer, and they supplied Dr. R. Wies- 

 mann, a Swiss entomologist, with a quantity of their "Experi- 

 ment No. G 1750" — later called Gesarol. Wiesmann tried 

 out this produa — a 1 % DDT dust — at the Swiss Federal Ex- 

 perimental Agricultural Station at Waederswill, where its 

 remarkable insecticidal properties were verified. Then, out 

 into the fields it went; the Swis^ potato crop was saved; and 

 the magic letters DDT were soon destined to become a com- 

 mon household expression throughout the world. 



Soon the world was to be embroiled in a conflict of 

 unimagined proportions. Man was destined to kill his fel- 

 low man on battlefields throughout the world. Many 

 American boys, brought up in a country where the standards 

 of sanitation are the highest in the world, were soon to be 

 sent to many lands where the menace of typhus and other 

 dreaded diseases awaited them. Medical men were well 

 aware of the serious implications of the situation, and our 

 medical resources were rapidly mustered to study means to 

 save our military men from the fate that had befallen so 

 many armies in the past. The experiments of Geigy in 

 Switzerland had shown that DDT was an amazingly effective 

 killer of the louse — that tiny insect that carries the dreaded 

 typhus. In August 1942, Geigy informed Major De Jonge, 

 American military attache in Berne, Switzerland, of their 



