La guerre miasmatique

Regarding the illustrations from "La Guerre au Vingtième Siècle" (1887) by Albert Robida (1848-1926):

The world of the 1950s presented by the artist was merely the Victorian society of his day with the addition of technological marvels like television, rapid-transit systems, submarines, etc. This innovations did not in any way change the assumptions, conventions, ans structure of that society; they might simply have been tacked on as an afterthought. [...] Robida, like his contemporaries, could not picture the ramifications of these developments. Nevertheless, his accomplishment in depicting the great potentiality of science, notably in the way that it would alter the conduct of war, cannot be over emphasised [...].

Robida, as has been noted, termed chemical warfare, la guerra miasmatique, and it was a tactic much favoured by the inhabitants of the artist's mid-twentieth century world. Here casualties are administered an antidote by a medical officer in a gas mask. The chemical big gun on the battlements is disturbingly convincing in its design.


Corps Medical Offensif. Howitzer-like canon proper shells containing typhus and other deadly "miasmas" into the enemy trenches. Warfare has reached a new level of sophistication. "We will enlist the support of the microbes in our just cause",
proclaims one Important Person. This is one side of the reality, a sneak preview of the Great War.

[Frewin, Anthony: One Hundred Years Of Science Fiction Illustration, Jupiter Books (London) Limited, 1974]