Most people know about the famous Dr. Mengele, or the ‘Angel of Death,’ one of Hitler’s doctors who used human experiments to supplement his research on heredity, focusing especially on young twins.
Less known are human experiments done at exactly the same time, in the 1930s and 40s, halfway across the earth. In Japanese-occupied Manchuria, the Japanese set up a camp they called Unit 731 (or "Epidemic Prevention and Water Purification Department of the Kuantung Army”), where they used humans to develop and test chemical and biological weapons. One of these weapons was typhoid fever, which they added to the water of a small town and killed not only many in the community, but, accidentally, many Japanese soldiers.
Among the diseases they gave to their human subjects were: cholera, bubonic plague, dysentery, and anthrax, sometimes cutting open their live victims to see what a disease does to a person. They dropped these diseases in ponds and streams, or dropped plague-infested fleas from planes.
These experiments weren’t stopped until the end of WWII, when the Japanese blew up the Unit 731 HQ, and killed the remaining victims.
In answer to Amy’s question of last week, the term “plague” generally refers to bubonic plague, though earlier, before epidemics were specified into diseases, they were often referred under the umbrella of “plague.”
Pestilence: c.1300, from O.Fr. pestilence, from L. pestilentia "plague," noun of action from pestilentem (nom. pestilens) "infected, unwholesome, noxious," from pestis "deadly disease, plague."
Plague (n.) late 14c., "affliction, calamity, evil, scourge," . . . Specifically in reference to "bubonic plague" from c.1600.
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