May 11, 2011 • 19 mins
In the late 1800s, no one really monitored food additives. After Congress refused to regulate food safety, Harvey Wiley had groups of healthy men ingest poisons for six months. Tune in to learn how these "Poison Squads" shed new light on Wiley's cause.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to bling a Chuck Awarding, and I'm fair doubting.
And when you walk into the grocery store these days,
there's a lot of things to kind of worry about.
(00:20):
I guess, I mean, should you buy organic? Should you
buy foods that are grass fed, cage free? Is what
you're looking at locally grown? Just to name a few
problems you might face, because there's pretty serious health related
food concerns to, like mercury levels and fish and bacterial contamination.
You know, there was that news recently that half of
(00:41):
all the meat sold in the United States is tainted
with drug resistance staff. Yeah, that's freaking out. Apparently some
people aren't very concerned about it. I don't know. I
guess that's a big statistic, but it sounds weird. And still,
you know, we have the salmonilla egg recall a few
years ago there was the peanut but are scare Yeah,
when you couldn't eat certain granola bars. Just I remember
(01:03):
my mom calling me up about that, like, don't need
any granola bars. I might have peanut butter. Yeah, yeah,
so you know, we have a lot to think about. Yeah.
So it's not a perfect system right now as far
as food regulation goes, but it still seems to have
come a long way from what it was about a
hundred years ago in the US, when there were really
no labeling requirements, no safety tests, and no one really
(01:23):
monitored additives. Those substances like borax, which is actually used
in detergent and things like that, and formalde hyde um
and these were used as food preservatives at the time,
and formalde hyde in your food sounds pretty ridiculous if
you've ever done like a dissection in biology class or
something and smelled the stuff. But that's when the chemist
(01:45):
Harvey W. Wiley came into the picture, because obviously, if
you have stuff like borax and formaldehyde in your food,
things need work. Yeah. So Whiley stepped in first mainly
trying to change things solely through legislation, and then through
something that came to be known as the Poison Squad,
and that was a kind of human experiment through which
(02:06):
Wiley tested substances used in food that he believed to
be harmful. And this became kind of a media sensation attention. Yeah,
as it would so we're going to take a look
at how the poison Squad worked and what it accomplished,
and also why Wiley is considered by many to be
the founding father of the U. S. Feud and drug administration. Yeah,
but first we're going to give a little background on Wiley.
(02:27):
He's kind of a pioneer man almost, who was born
in eighteen forty four in a log cabin on a
frontier farm in Indiana, so real classic beginnings. And in
addition to being a father, his father was a Campbellite preacher,
So Wiley grew up in this real evangelical background with
a strong emphasis on doing the right thing, which is
(02:49):
clearly going to come into play in his later career. Yeah.
But before that career took off, he went to Hanover
College in Indiana in the eighteen sixties. He dropped out
briefly in eighteen sixty four to serve in the Union
are Me during the Civil War, but he never really
saw combat. So he returned to finish up at Hanover
and then went on to get a medical degree at
Indiana Medical College, and he studied medical science for a
(03:10):
year at Harvard, so very educated. Yeah, and from there
he got a professorship in chemistry at Purdue University, and
it's while he was there that he helped write a
report for the Indiana State Board of Health condemning adulterated foods.
And his main thoughts and main research had to do
with honey, and he found basically that companies were adulterating honey,
(03:33):
passing it off as pure honey, but really adding glucose.
In fact, the product they were selling was mostly glucos
and he was pretty disturbed by this. So this is
the first time he caused a little bit of a controversy,
but it was not the last time. No, this experience
is what caused the interest in food adulteration that Wiley
would have throughout his entire career and his life. In
(03:55):
eighteen eighty three, he actually got a chance to take
that interest to the national level when he was offered
the position of chief Chemist in the Department of Agriculture
in Washington, d c. And this came at a good
time too, because he had some trouble with the administration
at Perdue around that time to make an exit, Yeah, exactly.
I think it was something about riding a bike on
campus and that he didn't think that was like fitting
for a professor. Yeah, how scandalous. Definitely. So his main
(04:20):
job as the chief chemist was to support new agricultural industries,
because this was, after all, a government job. That's the
kind of thing that he'd be expected to do. But
he still followed his own passion and developed this test
for food purity on the side something so he could
look at what people were really putting into food. Yeah,
(04:41):
and eventually he took his fight for federal food regulation
to Congress. His work contributed to several pure food bills
in the eighteen eighties and the eighteen nineties. So this
is what we're referring to when we talked about legislation
that he contributed to. But none of these bills, they
none of them went anywhere. They all kind of failed.
So something had to be done though, I mean, adulteration
(05:03):
of food was a real problem. There were instances of
sanded sugar, watered milk, sawdust, enhanced flour, which just sounds crazy,
just to name a few things that were problems at
the time, and some states had laws against these things,
but with the growth of nationwide food distribution, it was
really hard to enforce them once they crossed state lines yea,
so people didn't know where their food was even coming from.
(05:25):
And according to an article by Bernard A. Weiss Burger
in American Heritage, late nineteenth century technology brought more additives
than to the picture too, So it wasn't just these
things being added like sugar or watered milk, it was
coloring agents and preservatives like copper sulfate and flour bleaches
(05:45):
and Wiley's first big concern that we mentioned earlier borax. Yeah. So,
since manufacturers weren't required to prove preservative safety, Wiley asked
Congress in for money to do the test himself. He
wanted to learn quote, whether preservatives should ever be used
or not, and if so, what preservatives and in what quantities.
(06:06):
So he thought he could prove that these substances were
harmful that Congress in the public would finally support national
regulation policies. So that was the goal here, third party
testing essentially, So in nineteen o two, Congress gave Wiley
funding to start these tests that he wanted to do,
and they were known officially as the Hygiene I Table Trials,
And the way they worked is kind of medieval seeming almost.
(06:29):
It reminds me of the King's Food tester. Yeah, it's
really interesting. Actually, widely recruited twelve young, healthy men. They
were all volunteers actually from the Department of Agriculture. But yeah,
they weren't tricked in any way. They were all in
their twenties though, and that was so they'd be sturdy
enough for the experiment or so widely determined. And for
(06:50):
a span of six months, those twelve men agreed to
eat only meals that were prepared in a test kitchen
that Wiley set up in the basement of the Agriculture
department building. Yeah, here's the catch. Each meal would include
one suspect ingredient that Wiley wanted to test, So for example,
the borax. Yeah, that's gonna make you question this free
(07:11):
meal deal a little bit. Yeah, definitely sounds good up
until that point. But another aspect of it was that
the men also pledged to eat all their meals at
the hygiene table, and that was that meant that they
were eating at a dining table in a dining room
that was set up next to the test kitchen. So
this was all in the basement together. I'm thinking this
is the counterpart two NPR Splendid Table. Yeah, not very
(07:32):
pleasant though, So they agreed that they would not consume
any outside foods or beverages to except for water, and
even that had to be measured and reported. I mean,
the deal was they didn't want to get sick from
something the guy was snacking on them side exactly, And
each participant had to record his weight, temperature, and pulse
before each meal and what he ate. They also had
(07:54):
to submit urine and fece samples daily, so not definitely
growth all around, very was what I would say. That's
probably the most unpleasant aspect of the daily ritual. Yeah.
And then also doctors would examine the participants and note
any symptoms in case these additives were having negative effects
on a weekly basis. Right, So all the volunteers obviously
(08:16):
knew that they were eating potential poisons, but they all
signed to these waivers that absolved the government from any
liability in case they got ill. And so initially Wiley's
approach was to make it pretty random to mix the
potential poison, whatever the poison of the week was, into
the food, which was supposed to be pretty good too.
I mean, I guess that's why they got these volunteers
(08:38):
in the first place. Yeah, I've seen different examples mentioned
roast chicken, braise, beef, buttered asparagus, so in a little
borax on the side. Well, if you forget about the borax,
it sounds like a decent deal. But even though the
men weren't told which food item Whiley put the substance
such as borax, and they ended up avoiding that particular
item in the first couple of trials, So it tastes funny. Yeah.
(09:01):
For example, if Whyley put box and the butter, they
wouldn't eat it because they would notice it. I'm not
sure how different, how different the taste would be, but yeah,
you would realize, oh, that's where the poison is and
move on to your roast chicken and asparagus meal. Yeah.
So then what Wiley did pretty early in the trial
as he changed his approach, he started putting the preservatives
in these gelatin capsules instead, and this meant that the
(09:23):
poison was no longer hidden. But surprisingly, really surprisingly to me,
the men took them willingly Whiley put them out in
a serving bowl with each meal, with the understanding that
if they were taken in the middle of the meal,
they would dissolve in the digested food. So it would
be pretty much the same as eating it actually mixed
in with the food item. Yeah, and another interesting point,
(09:44):
Whyley didn't make the guinea pigs take all the risk
he took. He joined in for many of the meals.
To imagine that endeared him to the twelve volunteers a
little bit. So obviously, these hygiene e table trials become
a national sensation pretty quickly. In the newspaper Earth think
of of an even better name for the whole thing
and dubbed the volunteer test subjects the Poison Squad, and
(10:06):
the experiment really did have a show like quality to it.
The volunteers even had their own slogan. It was none
but the brave can eat the fair. And people even
wrote songs about them. Yeah. One was called the Song
of the Poison Squad, and it was by the lu
doc Stater minstrels. I hope I said that, right, all
you lu doc Stater fans out there can let us
know it. Yeah, right in and tell me if I
(10:27):
said that correctly. But the song went like this or
this was one verse. Oh, they may get over it,
but they'll never look the same. That kind of bill
of fair would drive most men insane. Next week he'll
give them mothballs ala Newburgh or else plain. Oh, they
may get over it, but they'll never look the same. Yeah.
So pretty catchy there. I like to think they might
(10:48):
have played that at the dinner table or something. But
some people obviously put a humorous spin on this whole thing,
and the experiment even made its way into variety acts
of the time. Um probably understandably so, because research at
the dinner table didn't really seem that sciency. It seemed
kind of fun. Well not that fun, I guess, but
(11:09):
different at least, yeah, compared to most traditional scientific stent
in a lab coat kind of situation. Yeah, I mean
you could. I could imagine this being like a reality show,
couldn't you. I mean, I think it is a reality
show across between Fear Factor and Top Chef or something,
So you can imagine a million people wanting to tune in,
so to speak, and see what's happening every week with
(11:30):
these guys. And while he did worry about this at
first because he wanted to take the research seriously, but
he still knew that he needed to win over the
public and get them involved. The point of the whole
thing so he worked the banquet circuit, even making up
little poems for listeners, like this one entitled I Wonder
What's in it? And it goes the pepper perhaps contains
coconut shells, and the mustard is cotton seed meal, the
(11:53):
coffee in sooth of baked chickory smells, and the terrapin
tastes like roast veal. Yeah, and he also started talking
into reporters to about the experiment, so not just writing
these catchy little poems, but giving them every detail of
the effects that the poisons had on the men. And
some of the examples of the effects were disturbing. I mean,
(12:13):
borax proved to be not so bad. Perhaps it gave
the men a little bit of indigestion, but over the
long term and in increased amounts, it caused weight loss
and reproductive system damage. So definitely some problems with a
frequent food additive there. Formaldehyde was tested later, and Wiley
had to end those tests pretty much right off the
(12:34):
bat because the men got so sick they couldn't even
get out of bed. So you know, that's good stuff
for the news. Yeah, there's definitely some scare factor there,
But the experiment went on for five years with different
groups of volunteers, and eventually that publicity that they got
definitely paid off. The public's growing awareness put pressure on
the government, and on June thirtieth and nineteen o six,
(12:55):
President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drugs Act,
which was large really written by Wiley, and it was
the nation's first law regulating food and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Many
called it the Wiley Act, not surprisingly enough, and Wiley
got a new job out of it too. Yeah, he
got to oversee this new acts administration, and that's kind
(13:17):
of why he's known as the father of the Pure
Food and Drug Act, as you might imagine. Yeah, but
things were still a little bit rough for him after
this big triumph. Even he had a lot of adversaries
in Congress, and he met with a lot of opposition
while trying to enforce the Act, because you know, an
act on the books is only as good as its enforcement.
So he even butted heads with the President and the
(13:39):
Secretary of Agriculture and ended up resigning in nineteen twelve. Yeah,
but it wasn't so bad for his career because he
ended up moving on to another really high profile position.
He signed on as the director of the Bureau of Foods, Sanitation,
and Health for Good Housekeeping magazine, and the magazine at
that point had already created the Good Housekeeping Institute laboratories
to ensure the reliability of thes that it featured in
(14:01):
the magazine on its pages. So while he added his
own lab in d C to the mix and continued
his fight for pure food in that way, and he
worked there for another nineteen years as the director before
he died in nineteen thirty at the ripe old age
of eighty six. I guess some of those additives didn't
have too bad of an effect on him for the
long term. But during those years he led the fight
(14:22):
for tougher government inspection of meat, and for pure butter
that was unadulterated with water, and for whole wheat flour,
among a lot of other things. And interestingly, that Good
Housekeeping tested an approved seal also became a real symbol
of responsible industry of safe food, and it's still probably
means something to consumers today, I'd say yeah, for sure.
(14:46):
And Wiley's accomplishment is felt in other ways to borax
sale silic acid formalde hyde and copper sulfate. All of
these things are long gone from the food additive marketly, yeah,
thank goodness. And that pure feud and Drug Act that
Wiley each ampiend of that led to the more famous
ninety eight Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. So changes,
(15:08):
big changes, definitely um And As for former members of
the Poison Squad, no official follow up was done on
how they did in later years, but anecdotal evidence showed
that at least some of them did okay. One, for example,
a guy named William O. Robinson lived to be ninety four,
so didn't turn out so badly for everyone. Yeah. I
like to imagine maybe Poison Squad was on their business
(15:29):
cards or something after the fact. Oh yeah, I would
wear that you went to the restaurant business or something.
I don't know. I think you'd always be suspicious though,
So the restaurant business, how would be? I'm suspicious now
after reading this, and I think others are probably feeling
pretty suspicious about the food they're consuming nowadays too, definite
lyast in some cases. There was an article on slate
(15:51):
dot com actually by Deborah Bloom about this exact topic
about Yeah, she brings up the poison squads and basically
ties it into current day food issues with bacterial contamination
and so forth, things that we mentioned in intro and um,
you know, just talks about how it might be time
to kind of crack down on food regulation again. Yeah.
(16:11):
Maybe grab lunch though before you listen to the podcast
and read the article. Yeah, like a long time before
you're long. I listened to the podcast read the article,
although if you're listening now you probably are it's too late. Sorry. Um,
but that is all we have today on the Poison Squaw. Yeah,
we'll wrap up with some listener mail. So we got
(16:34):
another email from Marcia And if you guys remember, she's
the one who wrote in proposing a little bit of
a deal if we covered Catalina da er a rousso
we would in return here's some podcasts that her own
students recorded. So we obviously have accepted that deal. It
was pretty fun. But she wrote in to note that
(16:55):
our use of exclusively feminine pronouns to refer to arrows
so might upset from people who are very attached to
her status or his status as a transgender hero, for
example of Leslie Fineberg. That was one of the examples
she gave writes about arrowsou using masculine pronouns exclusively in
(17:16):
Transgender Warriors, and she also wrote that some people might
want to claim Arrows so as a bath Carol. And
we did, in fact get one email from somebody questioning
our use of the feminine pronouns for it, and a
Facebook comment I believe Yeah, I think so. Jeff wrote
in to say that I believe you made the wrong
choice when referring to him with female pronouns. I understand
(17:38):
and agree that sticking with one type of personal pronoun
to avoid confusion is a good idea. However, taking into
account Alonso's choice to live and identify as a man,
in the acceptance he ultimately received, I believe he had
owed the respect of his chosen gender identity. Yeah. As
Jeff mentioned, our decision to refer to Arrows as a
(17:58):
female as a her was based on consistency, especially for
an audio podcast. We wanted it to be clear who
we were talking about in the context of the podcast.
But we I think we both absolutely respect a person's
right to be identified however they want to be. Yeah,
and I mean I was definitely interested to see the
(18:18):
mail we got for it. So, Yeah, it's a great point,
and I'm glad that we have this opportunity to put
that out there so that people know. Definitely. Yeah, And
if you guys ever want to write in to make
a comment like that, or to make a suggestion, maybe
just your own food squad poison squad story. Hopefully you
don't have well maybe actually we don't want to read that.
(18:39):
I don't, I don't know. If I want to learn
any more scary things about substances, maybe don't write it
about that, But anything else you can definitely contact us
at History podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're
also on Twitter and misson history, and we're on Facebook.
And if you want to learn a little bit more
about human experiments, we have an article on our website
(18:59):
called how human and Experimentation works, and you can look
at it by visiting our homepage at www dot how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To
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(19:20):
Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today
on iTunes.
Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
stuff Works dot com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
I'm to bling a Chuck Awarding, and I'm fair doubting.
And when you walk into the grocery store these days,
there's a lot of things to kind of worry about.
(00:20):
I guess, I mean, should you buy organic? Should you
buy foods that are grass fed, cage free? Is what
you're looking at locally grown? Just to name a few
problems you might face, because there's pretty serious health related
food concerns to, like mercury levels and fish and bacterial contamination.
You know, there was that news recently that half of
(00:41):
all the meat sold in the United States is tainted
with drug resistance staff. Yeah, that's freaking out. Apparently some
people aren't very concerned about it. I don't know. I
guess that's a big statistic, but it sounds weird. And still,
you know, we have the salmonilla egg recall a few
years ago there was the peanut but are scare Yeah,
when you couldn't eat certain granola bars. Just I remember
(01:03):
my mom calling me up about that, like, don't need
any granola bars. I might have peanut butter. Yeah, yeah,
so you know, we have a lot to think about. Yeah.
So it's not a perfect system right now as far
as food regulation goes, but it still seems to have
come a long way from what it was about a
hundred years ago in the US, when there were really
no labeling requirements, no safety tests, and no one really
(01:23):
monitored additives. Those substances like borax, which is actually used
in detergent and things like that, and formalde hyde um
and these were used as food preservatives at the time,
and formalde hyde in your food sounds pretty ridiculous if
you've ever done like a dissection in biology class or
something and smelled the stuff. But that's when the chemist
(01:45):
Harvey W. Wiley came into the picture, because obviously, if
you have stuff like borax and formaldehyde in your food,
things need work. Yeah. So Whiley stepped in first mainly
trying to change things solely through legislation, and then through
something that came to be known as the Poison Squad,
and that was a kind of human experiment through which
(02:06):
Wiley tested substances used in food that he believed to
be harmful. And this became kind of a media sensation attention. Yeah,
as it would so we're going to take a look
at how the poison Squad worked and what it accomplished,
and also why Wiley is considered by many to be
the founding father of the U. S. Feud and drug administration. Yeah,
but first we're going to give a little background on Wiley.
(02:27):
He's kind of a pioneer man almost, who was born
in eighteen forty four in a log cabin on a
frontier farm in Indiana, so real classic beginnings. And in
addition to being a father, his father was a Campbellite preacher,
So Wiley grew up in this real evangelical background with
a strong emphasis on doing the right thing, which is
(02:49):
clearly going to come into play in his later career. Yeah.
But before that career took off, he went to Hanover
College in Indiana in the eighteen sixties. He dropped out
briefly in eighteen sixty four to serve in the Union
are Me during the Civil War, but he never really
saw combat. So he returned to finish up at Hanover
and then went on to get a medical degree at
Indiana Medical College, and he studied medical science for a
(03:10):
year at Harvard, so very educated. Yeah, and from there
he got a professorship in chemistry at Purdue University, and
it's while he was there that he helped write a
report for the Indiana State Board of Health condemning adulterated foods.
And his main thoughts and main research had to do
with honey, and he found basically that companies were adulterating honey,
(03:33):
passing it off as pure honey, but really adding glucose.
In fact, the product they were selling was mostly glucos
and he was pretty disturbed by this. So this is
the first time he caused a little bit of a controversy,
but it was not the last time. No, this experience
is what caused the interest in food adulteration that Wiley
would have throughout his entire career and his life. In
(03:55):
eighteen eighty three, he actually got a chance to take
that interest to the national level when he was offered
the position of chief Chemist in the Department of Agriculture
in Washington, d c. And this came at a good
time too, because he had some trouble with the administration
at Perdue around that time to make an exit, Yeah, exactly.
I think it was something about riding a bike on
campus and that he didn't think that was like fitting
for a professor. Yeah, how scandalous. Definitely. So his main
(04:20):
job as the chief chemist was to support new agricultural industries,
because this was, after all, a government job. That's the
kind of thing that he'd be expected to do. But
he still followed his own passion and developed this test
for food purity on the side something so he could
look at what people were really putting into food. Yeah,
(04:41):
and eventually he took his fight for federal food regulation
to Congress. His work contributed to several pure food bills
in the eighteen eighties and the eighteen nineties. So this
is what we're referring to when we talked about legislation
that he contributed to. But none of these bills, they
none of them went anywhere. They all kind of failed.
So something had to be done though, I mean, adulteration
(05:03):
of food was a real problem. There were instances of
sanded sugar, watered milk, sawdust, enhanced flour, which just sounds crazy,
just to name a few things that were problems at
the time, and some states had laws against these things,
but with the growth of nationwide food distribution, it was
really hard to enforce them once they crossed state lines yea,
so people didn't know where their food was even coming from.
(05:25):
And according to an article by Bernard A. Weiss Burger
in American Heritage, late nineteenth century technology brought more additives
than to the picture too, So it wasn't just these
things being added like sugar or watered milk, it was
coloring agents and preservatives like copper sulfate and flour bleaches
(05:45):
and Wiley's first big concern that we mentioned earlier borax. Yeah. So,
since manufacturers weren't required to prove preservative safety, Wiley asked
Congress in for money to do the test himself. He
wanted to learn quote, whether preservatives should ever be used
or not, and if so, what preservatives and in what quantities.
(06:06):
So he thought he could prove that these substances were
harmful that Congress in the public would finally support national
regulation policies. So that was the goal here, third party
testing essentially, So in nineteen o two, Congress gave Wiley
funding to start these tests that he wanted to do,
and they were known officially as the Hygiene I Table Trials,
And the way they worked is kind of medieval seeming almost.
(06:29):
It reminds me of the King's Food tester. Yeah, it's
really interesting. Actually, widely recruited twelve young, healthy men. They
were all volunteers actually from the Department of Agriculture. But yeah,
they weren't tricked in any way. They were all in
their twenties though, and that was so they'd be sturdy
enough for the experiment or so widely determined. And for
(06:50):
a span of six months, those twelve men agreed to
eat only meals that were prepared in a test kitchen
that Wiley set up in the basement of the Agriculture
department building. Yeah, here's the catch. Each meal would include
one suspect ingredient that Wiley wanted to test, So for example,
the borax. Yeah, that's gonna make you question this free
(07:11):
meal deal a little bit. Yeah, definitely sounds good up
until that point. But another aspect of it was that
the men also pledged to eat all their meals at
the hygiene table, and that was that meant that they
were eating at a dining table in a dining room
that was set up next to the test kitchen. So
this was all in the basement together. I'm thinking this
is the counterpart two NPR Splendid Table. Yeah, not very
(07:32):
pleasant though, So they agreed that they would not consume
any outside foods or beverages to except for water, and
even that had to be measured and reported. I mean,
the deal was they didn't want to get sick from
something the guy was snacking on them side exactly, And
each participant had to record his weight, temperature, and pulse
before each meal and what he ate. They also had
(07:54):
to submit urine and fece samples daily, so not definitely
growth all around, very was what I would say. That's
probably the most unpleasant aspect of the daily ritual. Yeah.
And then also doctors would examine the participants and note
any symptoms in case these additives were having negative effects
on a weekly basis. Right, So all the volunteers obviously
(08:16):
knew that they were eating potential poisons, but they all
signed to these waivers that absolved the government from any
liability in case they got ill. And so initially Wiley's
approach was to make it pretty random to mix the
potential poison, whatever the poison of the week was, into
the food, which was supposed to be pretty good too.
I mean, I guess that's why they got these volunteers
(08:38):
in the first place. Yeah, I've seen different examples mentioned
roast chicken, braise, beef, buttered asparagus, so in a little
borax on the side. Well, if you forget about the borax,
it sounds like a decent deal. But even though the
men weren't told which food item Whiley put the substance
such as borax, and they ended up avoiding that particular
item in the first couple of trials, So it tastes funny. Yeah.
(09:01):
For example, if Whyley put box and the butter, they
wouldn't eat it because they would notice it. I'm not
sure how different, how different the taste would be, but yeah,
you would realize, oh, that's where the poison is and
move on to your roast chicken and asparagus meal. Yeah.
So then what Wiley did pretty early in the trial
as he changed his approach, he started putting the preservatives
in these gelatin capsules instead, and this meant that the
(09:23):
poison was no longer hidden. But surprisingly, really surprisingly to me,
the men took them willingly Whiley put them out in
a serving bowl with each meal, with the understanding that
if they were taken in the middle of the meal,
they would dissolve in the digested food. So it would
be pretty much the same as eating it actually mixed
in with the food item. Yeah, and another interesting point,
(09:44):
Whyley didn't make the guinea pigs take all the risk
he took. He joined in for many of the meals.
To imagine that endeared him to the twelve volunteers a
little bit. So obviously, these hygiene e table trials become
a national sensation pretty quickly. In the newspaper Earth think
of of an even better name for the whole thing
and dubbed the volunteer test subjects the Poison Squad, and
(10:06):
the experiment really did have a show like quality to it.
The volunteers even had their own slogan. It was none
but the brave can eat the fair. And people even
wrote songs about them. Yeah. One was called the Song
of the Poison Squad, and it was by the lu
doc Stater minstrels. I hope I said that, right, all
you lu doc Stater fans out there can let us
know it. Yeah, right in and tell me if I
(10:27):
said that correctly. But the song went like this or
this was one verse. Oh, they may get over it,
but they'll never look the same. That kind of bill
of fair would drive most men insane. Next week he'll
give them mothballs ala Newburgh or else plain. Oh, they
may get over it, but they'll never look the same. Yeah.
So pretty catchy there. I like to think they might
(10:48):
have played that at the dinner table or something. But
some people obviously put a humorous spin on this whole thing,
and the experiment even made its way into variety acts
of the time. Um probably understandably so, because research at
the dinner table didn't really seem that sciency. It seemed
kind of fun. Well not that fun, I guess, but
(11:09):
different at least, yeah, compared to most traditional scientific stent
in a lab coat kind of situation. Yeah, I mean
you could. I could imagine this being like a reality show,
couldn't you. I mean, I think it is a reality
show across between Fear Factor and Top Chef or something,
So you can imagine a million people wanting to tune in,
so to speak, and see what's happening every week with
(11:30):
these guys. And while he did worry about this at
first because he wanted to take the research seriously, but
he still knew that he needed to win over the
public and get them involved. The point of the whole
thing so he worked the banquet circuit, even making up
little poems for listeners, like this one entitled I Wonder
What's in it? And it goes the pepper perhaps contains
coconut shells, and the mustard is cotton seed meal, the
(11:53):
coffee in sooth of baked chickory smells, and the terrapin
tastes like roast veal. Yeah, and he also started talking
into reporters to about the experiment, so not just writing
these catchy little poems, but giving them every detail of
the effects that the poisons had on the men. And
some of the examples of the effects were disturbing. I mean,
(12:13):
borax proved to be not so bad. Perhaps it gave
the men a little bit of indigestion, but over the
long term and in increased amounts, it caused weight loss
and reproductive system damage. So definitely some problems with a
frequent food additive there. Formaldehyde was tested later, and Wiley
had to end those tests pretty much right off the
(12:34):
bat because the men got so sick they couldn't even
get out of bed. So you know, that's good stuff
for the news. Yeah, there's definitely some scare factor there,
But the experiment went on for five years with different
groups of volunteers, and eventually that publicity that they got
definitely paid off. The public's growing awareness put pressure on
the government, and on June thirtieth and nineteen o six,
(12:55):
President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drugs Act,
which was large really written by Wiley, and it was
the nation's first law regulating food and pharmaceutical manufacturing. Many
called it the Wiley Act, not surprisingly enough, and Wiley
got a new job out of it too. Yeah, he
got to oversee this new acts administration, and that's kind
(13:17):
of why he's known as the father of the Pure
Food and Drug Act, as you might imagine. Yeah, but
things were still a little bit rough for him after
this big triumph. Even he had a lot of adversaries
in Congress, and he met with a lot of opposition
while trying to enforce the Act, because you know, an
act on the books is only as good as its enforcement.
So he even butted heads with the President and the
(13:39):
Secretary of Agriculture and ended up resigning in nineteen twelve. Yeah,
but it wasn't so bad for his career because he
ended up moving on to another really high profile position.
He signed on as the director of the Bureau of Foods, Sanitation,
and Health for Good Housekeeping magazine, and the magazine at
that point had already created the Good Housekeeping Institute laboratories
to ensure the reliability of thes that it featured in
(14:01):
the magazine on its pages. So while he added his
own lab in d C to the mix and continued
his fight for pure food in that way, and he
worked there for another nineteen years as the director before
he died in nineteen thirty at the ripe old age
of eighty six. I guess some of those additives didn't
have too bad of an effect on him for the
long term. But during those years he led the fight
(14:22):
for tougher government inspection of meat, and for pure butter
that was unadulterated with water, and for whole wheat flour,
among a lot of other things. And interestingly, that Good
Housekeeping tested an approved seal also became a real symbol
of responsible industry of safe food, and it's still probably
means something to consumers today, I'd say yeah, for sure.
(14:46):
And Wiley's accomplishment is felt in other ways to borax
sale silic acid formalde hyde and copper sulfate. All of
these things are long gone from the food additive marketly, yeah,
thank goodness. And that pure feud and Drug Act that
Wiley each ampiend of that led to the more famous
ninety eight Federal Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. So changes,
(15:08):
big changes, definitely um And As for former members of
the Poison Squad, no official follow up was done on
how they did in later years, but anecdotal evidence showed
that at least some of them did okay. One, for example,
a guy named William O. Robinson lived to be ninety four,
so didn't turn out so badly for everyone. Yeah. I
like to imagine maybe Poison Squad was on their business
(15:29):
cards or something after the fact. Oh yeah, I would
wear that you went to the restaurant business or something.
I don't know. I think you'd always be suspicious though,
So the restaurant business, how would be? I'm suspicious now
after reading this, and I think others are probably feeling
pretty suspicious about the food they're consuming nowadays too, definite
lyast in some cases. There was an article on slate
(15:51):
dot com actually by Deborah Bloom about this exact topic
about Yeah, she brings up the poison squads and basically
ties it into current day food issues with bacterial contamination
and so forth, things that we mentioned in intro and um,
you know, just talks about how it might be time
to kind of crack down on food regulation again. Yeah.
(16:11):
Maybe grab lunch though before you listen to the podcast
and read the article. Yeah, like a long time before
you're long. I listened to the podcast read the article,
although if you're listening now you probably are it's too late. Sorry. Um,
but that is all we have today on the Poison Squaw. Yeah,
we'll wrap up with some listener mail. So we got
(16:34):
another email from Marcia And if you guys remember, she's
the one who wrote in proposing a little bit of
a deal if we covered Catalina da er a rousso
we would in return here's some podcasts that her own
students recorded. So we obviously have accepted that deal. It
was pretty fun. But she wrote in to note that
(16:55):
our use of exclusively feminine pronouns to refer to arrows
so might upset from people who are very attached to
her status or his status as a transgender hero, for
example of Leslie Fineberg. That was one of the examples
she gave writes about arrowsou using masculine pronouns exclusively in
(17:16):
Transgender Warriors, and she also wrote that some people might
want to claim Arrows so as a bath Carol. And
we did, in fact get one email from somebody questioning
our use of the feminine pronouns for it, and a
Facebook comment I believe Yeah, I think so. Jeff wrote
in to say that I believe you made the wrong
choice when referring to him with female pronouns. I understand
(17:38):
and agree that sticking with one type of personal pronoun
to avoid confusion is a good idea. However, taking into
account Alonso's choice to live and identify as a man,
in the acceptance he ultimately received, I believe he had
owed the respect of his chosen gender identity. Yeah. As
Jeff mentioned, our decision to refer to Arrows as a
(17:58):
female as a her was based on consistency, especially for
an audio podcast. We wanted it to be clear who
we were talking about in the context of the podcast.
But we I think we both absolutely respect a person's
right to be identified however they want to be. Yeah,
and I mean I was definitely interested to see the
(18:18):
mail we got for it. So, Yeah, it's a great point,
and I'm glad that we have this opportunity to put
that out there so that people know. Definitely. Yeah, And
if you guys ever want to write in to make
a comment like that, or to make a suggestion, maybe
just your own food squad poison squad story. Hopefully you
don't have well maybe actually we don't want to read that.
(18:39):
I don't, I don't know. If I want to learn
any more scary things about substances, maybe don't write it
about that, But anything else you can definitely contact us
at History podcast at how stuff works dot com. We're
also on Twitter and misson history, and we're on Facebook.
And if you want to learn a little bit more
about human experiments, we have an article on our website
(18:59):
called how human and Experimentation works, and you can look
at it by visiting our homepage at www dot how
stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands
of other topics, visit how stuff works dot com. To
learn more about the podcast, click on the podcast icon
in the upper right corner of our homepage. The how
(19:20):
Stuff Works iPhone app has a ride. Download it today
on iTunes.
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