Grainy 1942 film of sheep trapped downwind of an army anthrax bomb on Scotland's Gruinard Island flickers next to an Iraqi soldier's decontamination kit from the 1991 Gulf war.
Alongside them at the Thackray Medical Museum in Leeds, school parties are voting on whether immunisation against anthrax should go ahead. Opinion yesterday was running four-to-one in favour.
"It's a very relevant subject at the moment," said Alan Humphries of the Thackray. "But it's also got a local reference, because anthrax used to be called the maladie de Bradford (Bradford disease)."
Anthrax was first isolated in the Yorkshire city in the late 19th century.
The year-long exhibition charts the medical inroads made on the disease, originally a rare animal infection, and the history of experiments with anthrax as a weapon.