The Poison Squad

by Deborah Blum

  “had to retire to a distance”: “Inspector Fears Embalmed Beef Men,” Chicago Tribune, October 29, 1899, p. 3. This story also detailed the threats made by the meatpackers against investigators.

  “apparently preserved by injected”: Miles’s remarks are cited in “Eagan and Embalmed Beef,” New York Times, February 2, 1899, p. 6.

  “He lies in his throat”: “Charles P. Eagan,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_P._Eagan.

  The Dodge hearings satisfied: “Army Beef Report Is Made Public,” New York Times, May 8, 1899, p. 1; Harvey Young, “Trichinous Pork and Embalmed Beef,” Pure Food (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 135–40.

  In anticipation, the president: Correspondence concerning the hearings and details of the specific findings can be found in the Harvey Washington Wiley Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, box 41, folder 1899.

  “fill all the interstices”: Memo, Harvey Wiley to James Wilson, January 18, 1899, Wiley Papers, box 41. In addition, Wiley’s testimony and his results are in the Report of the Commission Appointed by the President to Investigate the Conduct of the War Department During the War with Spain (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1899), pp. 854–62.

  “Packingtown,” as the locals: A portrait of the old Chicago stockyards can be found in Ron Grossman, “‘Hog Butcher to the World,’” Chicago Tribune, February 19, 2012: http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2012-02-19/site/ct-per-flash-stockyards-0219-2-20120219_1_union-stock-yard-butcher-shop-packingtown. Another retrospective look is Anne Bramley, “How Chicago’s Slaughterhouse Spectacles Paved the Way for Big Meat,” NPR, The Salt, December 3, 2015, www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/12/03/458314767/how-chicago-s-slaughterhouse-spectacles-paved-the-way-for-big-meat. And there’s a fine overview also at Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Union_Stock_Yards.

  The average housewife: Food prices are taken from “Prices from the 1899 Sears, Roebuck Grocery Lists,” Choosing Voluntary Simplicity, no date, www.choosingvoluntarysimplicity.com/prices-from-the-1899-sears-roebuck-grocery-lists/.

  The Beef Court convened: Testimony and later comments, such as from Carl Sandburg, are covered in Young, Pure Food, pp. 135–39, and in Edward F. Keuchel, “Chemicals and Meat: The Embalmed Beef Scandal of the Spanish American War,” Bulletin of Medical History 48, no. 2 (Summer 1974): 253–56. Miles’s testimony and grievances are reviewed in Louise Carroll Wade, “Hell Hath No Fury Like a General Scorned: Nelson A. Miles, the Pullman Strike, and the Beef Scandal of 1898,” Illinois Historical Journal 79 (1986): 162–84.

  “It was a disgrace”: “The Army Meat Scandal,” New York Times, February 21, 1899, p. 1.

  The army also sought: Coverage of the soldier’s death can be found in “Poisoned by Army Ration,” David B. McGowan, New York Times, May 27, 1898, p. 2.

  Metal poisoning from canned: K. P. McElroy and Willard D. Bigelow, “Canned Vegetables,” part 8 of U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bulletin 13, Foods and Food Adulterants (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1893).

  In a Munsey’s article: Frank Munsey to Harvey Wiley, July 14, 1899, with a copy of Wiley’s article attached, Wiley Papers, box 41.

  “embalmed milk” causing: “Embalmed Milk in Omaha: Many Infant Deaths Believed to Be Due to a Preservative Fluid,” New York Times, May 30, 1899, p. 1; Sanitarian (publication of the Medico-Legal Society of New York) 42 (1899): p. 372; “Sale of Embalmed Milk Less Frequent,” Preliminary Report of the Dairy and Food Commissioner for the Year 1907, bulletin 168, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, p. 25; A. G. Young, “Formaldehyde as a Milk Preservative,” Report to the Maine Board of Public Health, 1899, www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2329554/pdf/pubhealthpap00032-0152.pdf; “The Use of Borax and Formaldehyde as Preservatives of Food,” British Medical Journal, July 7, 1900, pp. 2062–63.

  “an epidemic of stomach trouble”: “Embalmed Beef Troubles in Cincinnati,” New York Times, June 16, 1899, p. 4.

  “It is noticeable”: “Embalmed Milk in Omaha: Many Infant Deaths Believed to Be Due to a Preservative Fluid,” New York Times, May 30, 1899, p. 1.

  “Two drops of a”: Thurman B. Rice, The Hoosier Health Officer: The History of the Indiana State Board of Health to 1925 (Indianapolis, Indiana State Board of Health, 1946), p. 162.

  “Well, it’s embalming”: Rice, Hoosier Health Officer, p. 165.

  “state confidently that”: Rice, Hoosier Health Officer, p. 163.

  Chapter Four: What’s in It?

  In 1899 U.S. senator: Mason and his role in the hearings are profiled in “Senator Mason, the Champion of Liberty,” San Francisco Call, January 10, 1899, p. 1. Hearing overviews can be found in Harvey Young, “The Mason Hearings,” in Pure Food (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 140–45; Oscar E. Anderson Jr., The Health of a Nation: Harvey W. Wiley and the Fight for Pure Food (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 127–32; and Michael Lesy and Lisa Stoffer, Repast: Dining Out at the Dawn of the New American Century 1900–1904 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2013), which on pages 29–31 includes some of Wiley’s most pointed testimony to the committee. A complete summary of the hearings can be found in Hearings Before the Committee of Interstate and Commerce of the U.S. House of Representatives, on Food Bills Prohibiting the Adulteration, Misbranding and Imitation of Foods, Candies, Drugs and Condiments in the District of Columbia and the Territories, and for Regulating Interstate Traffic Therein and for Other Purposes (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1902).

  sodium borate, or borax: A basic chemical profile of borax can be found on the Azo Materials Web site, www.azom.com/article.aspx?ArticleID=2588. The history of Pacific Coast Borax Company can be found at the Santa Clarita Valley history Web site, https://scvhistory.com/scvhistory/borax-20muleteam.htm; and at Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pacific_Coast_Borax_Company; and an interactive time line of its most positive moments can be found on the company’s own Web site, https://www.20muleteamlaundry.com/about.

  During the Mason hearings: Hearings Before the Committee.

  In the early spring: William E. Mason, Adulteration of Food Products: Report to Accompany S. Res. 447, Fifty-fifth Congress (Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1900), https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/011713494.

  “This is the only civilized”: https://books.google.com/books?id=XelP2FtgWxkC&pg=PA17&lpg=PA17&dq=Senator+Mason,+1900,+adulteration,+speech,+Senate&source=bl&ots=j51zdLIgP8&sig=NU1WBa_7ePzHO6g7spTpiRpgNv8&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiDvfmrwqzXAhXB7yYKHaygAfsQ6AEINDAC#v=onepage&q=Senator%20Mason%2C%201900%2C%20adulteration%2C%20speech%2C%20Senate&f=false.

  “before the public eye”: Marriott Brosius to Harvey Wiley, November 23, 1899, Harvey Washington Wiley Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, box 41.

  applauded the action: Anderson, Health of a Nation, p. 127.

  That same spring: Anna Kelton to Harvey Wiley, May 22 and 25, 1900, Harvey Washington Wiley Papers, Library of Congress, box 43; Harvey Wiley to Anna Kelton, May 19, 1900, Wiley Papers, box 43.

  “When I left for Paris”: Harvey Wiley to William Frear, July 29, 1900, Wiley Papers, box 43.

  “You say, ‘Why don’t’”: Harvey Wiley to Anna Kelton, May 24, 1900, Wiley Papers, box 43.

  Secretary Wilson wrote: James Wilson to Harvey Wiley, August 7, 1900, Wiley Papers, box 43.

  In 1901, shortly after: Anheuser-Busch to Harvey Wiley, June 4, 1900, Wiley Papers, box 45.

  The Woman’s Christian Temperance: The Woman’s Christian Temperance Union provides a history on its Web site at www.wctu.org/history.html, and there’s another from the Frances Willard House museum: https://franceswillardhouse.org/frances-willard/history-of-wctu/. The organization’s role in the pure-food fight is covered in detail in Laurine Swainston Goodwin, The Pure Food, Drink and Drug Crusaders, 1879–1914 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999). Frances Willard’s vision for the organization is outlined
on pp. 31–35 and the WCTU’s work on a state-by-state basis is noted throughout.

  Wisconsin-based Pabst: Pabst to Harvey Wiley, July 13, 1901, Wiley Papers, box 45.

  “This is our secret”: Anheuser-Busch to Harvey Wiley, June 4, 1900, Wiley Papers, box 45.

  In May 1901 the Pan-American: The adulterated food exhibit is described in E. E. Ewell, W. D. Bigelow, and Logan Waller Page, Exhibit of the Bureau of Chemistry at the Pan-American Exhibition, Buffalo, New York, 1901, Bulletin 63, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Chemistry. It can be found in full at https://archive.org/stream/exhibitofbureauo63ewel/exhibitofbureauo63ewel_djvu.txt.

  Reporter John D. Wells: John D. Wells, “The Story of an Eye-Witness to the Shooting of the President,” Collier’s Weekly, September 21, 1901; Lewis L. Gould, The Presidency of William McKinley (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1981); William Seale, The President’s House: A History (Washington, DC: White House Historical Association, 1986); “The Assassination of President William McKinley, 1901,” EyeWitness to History, 2010, www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/mckinley.htm.

  “I told William McKinley”: “1904: Alton Parker vs. Theodore Roosevelt,” The Times Looks Back: Presidential Elections 1896–1996, New York Times, 2000, http://events.nytimes.com/learning/general/specials/elections/1904/index.html.

  “In this hour of”: James Ford Rhodes, The McKinley and Roosevelt Administrations 1897–1909 (New York: Macmillan, 1922), p. 218.

  Wiley feared that if: Anderson, Health of a Nation, pp. 100–102.

  “‘If I go up there’”: This quote, as well as the excerpt of Wiley’s testimony and exchange in Congress on the sugar policy, Roosevelt’s response, and Wiley’s rueful acknowledgment of the long-lasting effect of this episode, can be found in Harvey Washington Wiley, An Autobiography (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1930), pp. 221–23. Wiley also recounts this episode in a self-published and angry book reviewing the fate of food safety legislation: Harvey W. Wiley, The History of a Crime Against the Food Law (Washington, DC, 1929), pp. 270–74.

  “I consider it a very unwise”: Wiley, An Autobiography, pp. 220–21.

  “I will let you off”: Wiley, An Autobiography, pp. 220–21.

  Chapter Five: Only the Brave

  By 1901 the Bureau: Suzanne Rebecca White, “Chemistry and Controversy: Regulating the Use of Chemicals in Foods, 1883–1959” (PhD diss., Emory University, 1994), pp. 8–10.

  The American chemical industry: White, “Chemistry and Controversy,” pp. 20–27. Additional information on the well-known Herbert Dow can be found at www.encyclopedia.com/history/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/dow-herbert-h and on the less well-known Jacob Baur, of the Liquid Carbonic Company, at http://forgottenchicago.com/articles/the-last-days-of-washburne/.

  combative Edwin Ladd: State Historical Society of North Dakota, “Edwin F. Ladd and the Pure Food Movement,” no date, http://ndstudies.gov/gr8/content/unit-iii-waves-development-1861-1920/lesson-4-alliances-and-conflicts/topic-6-progressive-movements/section-4-edwin-f-ladd-and-pure-food-movement.

  “By God, no Eastern”: Culver S. Ladd, Pure Food Crusader: Edwin Fremont Ladd (Pittsburgh: Dorrance Publishing, 2009).

  To showcase the problem: Shepard’s menu appears in Mark Sullivan, Our Times, vol. 2 (1927; repr. New York: Charles Scribner and Sons, 1971), pp. 506–7.

  “According to this menu”: Sullivan, Our Times, p. 507. See also James Shepard, “Like Substances,” Association of National Food and Dairy Departments, Eleventh Annual Convention (1907), pp. 165–74.

  Wiley had long worried: Wiley’s hygienic table trials, renamed the “Poison Squad” by newspaper reporters, grew out of his concerns about the lack of good—or often any—science behind chemical additives in the food supplies. He summarizes some of this backstory in Harvey W. Wiley, “The Influence of Preservatives and Other Substances Added to Foods upon Health and Metabolism,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 47, no. 189 (May–August 1908): pp. 302–28. His subsequent investigations on compounds ranging from borax to formaldehyde to salicylic acid cite in the introductory sections the previous research or lack of it. The Poison Squad studies themselves have been widely covered, both by newspapers and magazines of the time and by more recent food safety historians. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll provide here some of the most comprehensive summaries: White, “Chemistry and Controversy,” pp. 46–91; Laurine Swainston Goodwin, The Pure Food, Drink and Drug Crusaders, 1879–1914 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1999), pp. 219–24; Harvey Young, Pure Food (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), pp. 151–57; Oscar E. Anderson Jr., The Health of a Nation: Harvey W. Wiley and the Fight for Pure Food (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1958), pp. 149–52; Michael Lesy and Lisa Stoffer, Repast: Dining Out at the Dawn of the New American Century 1900–1904 (New York: W.W. Norton, 2013), pp. 31–34; Bruce Watson, “The Poison Squad: An Incredible History,” Esquire, June 27, 2013; Natalie Zarelli, “Food Testing in 1902 Featured a Bow Tie–Clad ‘Poison Squad’ Eating Plates of Acid,” Atlas Obscura, August, 30, 2016, www.atlasobscura.com/articles/food-testing-in-1902-featured-a-tuxedoclad-poison-squad-eating-plates-of-acid.

  “young, robust fellows”: Harvey Washington Wiley, U.S. Department of Agriculture, Influence of Food Preservatives and Artificial Colors on Digestion and Health: Boric Acid and Borax (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1904), p. 10.

  “whether such preservatives”: Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives, p. 23.

  “enable the Secretary”: Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives, p. 8.

  “Cheerful surroundings, good company”: Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives, pp. 13–14.

  “open, for the first time”: Carol Lewis, “The ‘Poison Squad’ and the Advent of Food and Drug Regulation,” U.S. Food and Drug Administration Consumer Magazine, November–December 2002, http://esq.h-cdn.co/assets/cm/15/06/54d3fdf754244_-_21_PoisonSquadFDA.pdf.

  “They are clerks”: Lewis, “The ‘Poison Squad.’”

  “Dear Sir,” wrote one: Bruce Watson, “The Poison Squad: An Incredible History,” Esquire, June 26, 2013, http://www.esquire.com/food-drink/food/a23169/poison-squad/.

  “You will begin”: Harvey Wiley to H. E. Blackburn, August 15, 1901, Wiley Papers, box 45.

  “so they came to us”: Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives, p. 10.

  “Did you explain”: The Borax Investigation: Hearings Before the Committee of Interstate and Foreign Commerce, U.S. House of Representatives (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, February 1906).

  As the details of the project: Newspaper coverage of Wiley’s toxicity studies is discussed in wonderful detail in Kevin C. Murphy, “Pure Food, the Press, and the Poison Squad: Evaluating Coverage of Harvey W. Wiley’s Hygienic Table,” 2001, www.kevincmurphy.com/harveywiley2.html.

  “Should they become hungry”: Murphy, “Pure Food, the Press, and the Poison Squad.”

  “pursue their ordinary”: Wiley, Influence of Food Preservatives.

  One of them involved: John C. Thresh and Arthur Porter, Preservatives in Food and Food Examination (London: J & A Churchill, 1906), pp. 16–52.

  Unlike Wiley, who: F. W. Tunnicliffe and Otto Rosenheim, “On the Influence of Boric Acid and Borax upon the General Metabolism of Children,” Journal of Hygiene 1, no. 2 (April 1901): 168–201.

  Wiley knew his study: H. W. Wiley, “Results of Experiments on the Effect of Borax Administered with Food,” Analyst, January 1, 1904, pp. 357–70.

  “It is pointed out”: Wiley, “Results of Experiments on the Effect of Borax.”

  “Those who thought”: Wiley, “Results of Experiments on the Effect of Borax.”

  his experiment had attracted: Brown’s approach to covering the Poison Squad is described in Murphy, “Pure Food, the Press, and the Poison Squad.” Among his stories published in the Washington Post: “Dr. Wiley and His Boarders,” November 21,
1902, p. 2; “Borax Ration Scant: Official Chef Falls in Disfavor with Guests,” December 23, 1902, p. 2; “Dr. Wiley in Despair: One Boarder Becomes Too Fat and Another Too Lean,” December 16, p. 2; and “Borax Begins to Tell—at Least the Six Eaters Are All Losing Flesh,” December 26, 1902, p. 2.

  “I can’t say anything”: “Borax Begins to Tell.”

  “The authorities are apprehensive”: Murphy, “Pure Food, the Press, and the Poison Squad.”

  “braving the perils”: “Dr. Wiley and His Boarders.”

  Christmas dinner menu: Murphy, “Pure Food, the Press, and the Poison Squad,” p. 3.

  That December he’d been: American Association for the Advancement of Science to Harvey Wiley, November 22, 1902, Harvey Washington Wiley Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, box 48. Harvey Wiley, “Poison Dinner Invitation,” 1902, Wiley Papers, box 48.

  Molineux was one of: Deborah Blum, The Poisoner’s Handbook: Murder and the Birth of Forensic Medicine in Jazz Age New York (New York: Penguin Books, 2010), pp. 61–63.

  “F.B. Linton, who weighs”: “Borax Begins to Tell.”

  “Dr. Wiley is in despair”: This and the other comedic lines from Brown’s reporting are in Murphy, “Pure Food, the Press, and the Poison Squad.”

  “The change in the complexion”: “The Chemical Food Eaters,” Summary (Elmira, NY), April 18, 1903, available at https://books.google.com/books?id=OgFLAAAAYAAJ&pg=PR116&lpg=PR116&dq=borax+turns+boarders+pink,+wiley&source=bl&ots=wCg8DwtqXr&sig=U1hq-ozDBsBsC2rQaX5IcnkNgew&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiy97LB2azXAhWE7iYKHeD2B00Q6AEISDAI#v=onepage&q=borax%20turns%20boarders%20pink%2C%20wiley&f=false.

  By that time, the once sedate: Dockstader’s song is reprinted in Murphy, “Pure Food, the Press, and the Poison Squad,” p. 4, and in most accounts of the studies.