Perspectives on “bioterrorism” in the nineteenth century: the philosophy of mass destruction, fake news, and other fictions

ABSTRACT

The concept of “biological terrorism” predates the provenance of the term. Prominent anarchist intellectuals as well as sensationalist journalists alike promulgated the concept of deliberate disease during the last half of the nineteenth century. However, their published works do not reflect an accurate understanding of the biological sciences. In fact, the most accurate writings on disease as a weapon came not from anarchists or journalists, but from science-fiction writers.

KEYWORDS:

• bioterrorism
• biological weapons
• fake news
• history
• anarchists
• philosophy
• Germany

Notes

1 Walter Laqueur, The New Terrorism: Fanaticism and the Arms of Mass Destruction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), pp. 13–16.

2 For a discussion of Heinzen’s legacy, see Benjamin Grob-Fitzgibbon, “From the Dagger to the Bomb: Karl Heinzen and the Evolution of Political Terror,” Terrorism & Political Violence, Vol. 16, No. 1 (2004), pp. 97–115.

3 Karl Heinzen, “Murder,” in Walter Laqueur, ed., Voices of Terror: Manifestos, Writings, and Manuals of Al Qaeda, Hamas, and Other Terrorists from Around the World and Throughout the Ages (New York: Reed Press, 2004), pp. 64–65.

4 Ibid., p. 62.

5 Ibid., pp. 66–67.

6 Daniel Bessner and Michael Stauch, “Karl Heinzen and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Terror,” Terrorism and Political Violence, Vol. 22, No. 2 (2010), pp. 143–76; Karl Heinzen, “Murder and Liberty: A Contribution for the ‘Peace-League’ of Geneva,” in David C. Rapoport, ed., Terrorism: Critical Concepts in Political Science, Vol. 1 (New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 97–114. Bessner and Stauch provide a modern translation based on the original German version and use it in preference to the 1881 English translation appearing in Rapoport’s edited volume, which softened the radical language of the 1853 text.

7 Bessner and Stauch, “Karl Heinzen and the Intellectual Origins of Modern Terror,” p. 164.

8 Ibid., p. 165.

9 Ibid.

10 Ibid., p. 166.

11 Ibid., pp. 166–67.

12 Friedrich Engels, “The Communists and Karl Heinzen,” in Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works, Vol. 6 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975), pp. 291–306; Karl Marx, “Moralising Criticism and Critical Morality: A Contribution to German Cultural History Contra Karl Heinzen,” in Karl Marx, Frederick Engels: Collected Works, Vol. 6 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1975), pp. 312–40. Marx and Engels found Heinzen’s writings bombastic and intellectually shallow and viewed his activities as counterproductive.

13 Grob-Fitzgibbon, “From the Dagger to the Bomb,” p. 111. For discussions of Most’s activities, see also Frederic Trautmann, The Voice of Terror: A Biography of Johann Most (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1980); Max Nomad, Apostles of Revolution (Boston: Little, Brown, 1939), pp. 256–301.

14 In 1887, two years after Most published The Science of Revolutionary Warfare, Freiheit’s circulation was about 8000. See Trautmann, The Voice of Terror, p. 252.

15 For a modern reprint, see Johann Joseph Most, Science of Revolutionary Warfare (El Dorado, AZ: Desert, 1978).

16 See the comment by Peter Bergman in William Powell, The Anarchist Cookbook (El Dorado, AZ: Ozark Press, 2002), p. 9; Ann Larabee, The Wrong Hands: Popular Weapons Manuals and Their Historic Challenges to a Democratic Society (New York, Oxford University Press: 2015), p. 12.

17 In 1886, eight anarchists were tried and convicted of conspiracy after a bomb was thrown during a labor protest in Haymarket Square, Chicago. Trautmann, Voice of Terror, pp. 100, 125, 170.

18 Nomad, Apostles of Revolution, p. 286.

19 Tom Goyens, Beer and Revolution: The German Anarchist Movement in New York City, 1880–1914 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2007), p. 99.

20 Most, Science of Revolutionary Warfare, p. 48.

21 Deborah Blum, The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (New York: Penguin Press, 2010).

22 Most, Science of Revolutionary Warfare, p. 49.

23 Ibid., p. 50.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid., pp. 65–66. For a discussion of thorn apple, see the description prepared by the Cornell University Department of Animal Science at <www.ansci.cornell.edu/plants/jimsonweed/jimsonweed.html>.

26 Bill Bynum, “Discarded Diagnoses: Ptomaine Poisoning,” Lancet, Vol. 357, No. 9261 (2001), p. 1050; V.C. Vaughan and F.G. Novy, Ptomaines and Leucomaines: Or the Putrefactive and Physiological Alkaloids (Philadelphia: Lea Brothers, 1888); A.C. Farquharson, Ptomaines and Other Animal Alkaloids: Their Detection, Separation, and Clinical Features (Bristol: J. Wright, 1892), pp. 65–66.

27 Most, Science of Revolutionary Warfare, p. 51.

28 Goyens, Beer and Revolution, pp. 131–32; Trautmann, The Voice of Terror, pp. 203–04.

29 The Library of Congress catalog lists two other books authored by McLean: an 1887 study of human sexuality (The Curtain Lifted) and a business-management 1890 book (How to Do Business).

30 George N. McLean, The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America. From Its Incipient Stage to the First Bomb Thrown in Chicago. A Comprehensive Account of the Great Conspiracy Culminating in the Haymarket Massacre, May 4th, 1886 … the Apprehension, Trial, Conviction and Execution of the Leading Conspirators (New York: Haskell House, 1972), p. 244.

31 Trautmann, The Voice of Terror, p. 154.

32 New York Times, “Herr Most Is at Liberty,” April 2, 1887, p. 8.

33 New York Times, “Most Must Serve a Year: Judge Cowing Reads Him a Scathing Lecture,” December 9, 1887, p. 1; Trautmann, The Voice of Terror, pp. 250–51.

34 Tit-Bits, “Startling Revelations of an Anarchist,” March 10, 1894. I am indebted to Catherine Jefferson for locating this article, referenced in John Quail, The Slow Burning Fuse (London: Paladin, 1978), pp. 169–70. This magazine, founded in 1881 and shuttered in 1984, had a peak circulation of over one million. During its 103-year history, Tit-Bits (the hyphen disappeared in 1973) published many well-known writers, including Winston Churchill, H. Rider Haggard, and P.G. Wodehouse. For a short appreciation of this weekly newsmagazine, see Sue Cameron, David Fishlock, and Robert Cottrell, “The Inevitable Death of Titbits,” Financial Times, June 30, 1984, p. 17. Its full title was Tit-Bits from all the Interesting Books, Periodicals, and Newspapers of the World.

35 Quail, The Slow Burning Fuse, p. 170.

36 Robert Latham Owen, Yellow Fever; a Compilation of Various Publications. Results of the Work of Maj. Walter Reed, Medical Corps, United States Army, and the Yellow Fever Commission (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1911), p. 11.

37 Albert Robida, La guerre au vingtième siècle [War in the twentieth century] (Paris: G. Decaux, 1887); Jacques Richardson, “Future War and Superweapons, the Perceptive Fantasies of Albert Robida,” Foresight, Vol. 9, No. 6 (2007), pp. 61–73.

38 Robert Potter, The Germ Growers. An Australian Story of Adventure and Mystery (Melbourne: Melville, Mullen & Slade, 1892).

39 Helena Costa and Josep-E. Baños, “Bioterrorism in the Literature of the Nineteenth Century: The Case of Wells and The Stolen Bacillus,” Cogent Arts & Humanities, Vol. 3, No. 1 (2016), <www.cogentoa.com/article/10.1080/23311983.2016.1224538>.

40 H.G. Wells, “The Stolen Bacillus,” in The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents (New York: Macmillan, 1904), p. 4.

41 Costa and Baños, “Bioterrorism in the Literature of the Nineteenth Century,” p. 5.

42 Wells, “The Stolen Bacillus.”

43 Robert Louis Stevenson and Fanny van de Grift Stevenson, The Dynamiter (New York: Henry Holt, 1885).

44 Ibid., p. 185.

45 Deaglán Ó Donghaile, Blasted Literature: Victorian Political Fiction and the Shock of Modernism (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2011), p. 36.

46 START: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, “Global Terrorism Database,” <www.start.umd.edu/gtd/>.