Wily Monsters

All material produced or reproduced here and throughout this work is the sole copyright of the author and the family of Doctor D.C.M. Page MC.

“During the next day or two I was busy interviewing Colonels, Majors etc. and urging upon them the need for proper sanitation for the troops. It was a job getting them to make a move at all. On the 2^ndNovember I ‘flitted’ into a room in the yellow house. The place had previously been occupied by American troops, and was crawling with bugs. I had the room sprayed with cresol, but this didn’t seem to have much effect on the wily monsters.”

Cresol was and is an organic compound that can be extracted from coal tar or can be produced synthetically. It was commonly found in creosote and is the source of the coal tarry smell associated with the now discredited creosote products for the damaging effects on health and the environment. The European Union has restricted its use and it is no longer available to preserve your wooden fences.

The list of side effects from inhaling, ingesting or applying high levels of cresols to the skin is warning enough not to go near them. These include skin burning and irritation, vomiting, damage to internal organs, facial paralysis, coma and even death. The long list of case reports on this website is scary reading too https://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+250

One might wonder what the longer term effects on the people exposed to the Cresol solution may have been. Sadly the bugs Douglas speaks about seemed impervious, at least in the short term, to it.