July 24, 2021 • 17 mins
This 2011 episode from previous hosts Sarah and Deblina covers the U.S. in the late 1800s, when 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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Speaker 1 (00:02):
Happy Saturday, Everybody. One of our episodes this week was
on the Swill Milk scandal, and so we thought for
our Saturday Classic today we would stick with this theme
of adulterated food. This episode is from previous hosts Sarah
and Bablina and it came out on May eleven of eleven.
It's on chemist Harvey Washington Wiley, who studied effects of
(00:23):
food additives on human volunteers who became known as the
Poison Squad. His work eventually contributed to the passage of
the Pure Food and Drug Act of nineteen o six,
and he continued to campaign against food adulteration afterward. So overall,
at least in my opinion, this episode is not quite
as gross as some of the things that we talked
about in the Swill Milk episode, but it does cover
(00:47):
the physical effects of eating things like borax. We've also
had various listener requests to do an episode on the
Poison Squad, so for those folks particularly enjoy Welcome to
Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of My
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Deblina
(01:09):
Chok reboarding and I'm Sair Douting and when you walk
into the grocery store these days, there's a lot of
things to kind of worry about, 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
(01:30):
levels and fish and bacterial contamination. You know, there was
that news recently that half of all the meat sold
in the United States is tainted with drug resistance staff. Yeah,
that 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
(01:51):
salmonilla egg recall a few years ago, there was the
peanut butter scare. Yea when you couldn't eat certain granola bars.
Just I remember my mom calling me up about that, like,
don't eat need bars, I might have peanut butter. 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
(02:12):
hundred years ago in the US when there were really
no labeling requirements, no safety tests, and no one really
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
(02:32):
you've ever done like a dissection in biology class or
something and smelled the stuff. But that's when the chemist
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 Wiley stepped in, first mainly
trying to change things solely through legislation, and then through
(02:55):
something that came to be known as the Poison Squad,
and that was a kind of human experiment through which
Wiley tested substances used in food that he believed to
be harmful. And this became kind of a media sensation
of 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
(03:16):
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. 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
(03:38):
in this real evangelical background with a strong emphasis on
doing the right thing, which is 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 Army during the
Civil War, but he never really saw combat, so he
(03:58):
returned to finish up at and Over and then went
on to get a medical degree at Indiana Medical College,
and he studied medical science for a 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
(04:20):
main thoughts and main research had to do with honey,
and he found basically that companies were adulterating honey, 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
(04:41):
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 eight 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 the came at a good time too, because he
had some trouble with the administration at Perdue around that time,
(05:04):
trying 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.
Oh yeah, how scandalous. Definitely. So his main 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
(05:24):
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, 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
(05:46):
we're referring to when we talked about legislation that he
contributed to. But none of these bills that none of
them went anywhere. They all kind of failed. So something
had to be done though, I mean, adulteration of food
was a real problem. There were instances of sanded sugar,
watered milk, sawdust, enhanced flour, which just sounds crazy, just
(06:07):
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. Yeah, so
people didn't know where their food was even coming from.
And according to an article by Bernard A. Weissburger in
American Heritage, late nineteenth century technology brought more additives into
(06:29):
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, and Wiley's
first big concern that we mentioned earlier borax. Yeah. So,
since manufacturers weren't required to prove preservative safety, Wiley asked
(06:50):
Congress in for money to do the tests himself. He
wanted to learn, quote, whether preservatives should ever be used
or not, and if so, what preservatives and in what quantities.
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
(07:13):
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.
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. Yeah,
(07:37):
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
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, but here's the catch. Each meal would
(07:57):
include one suspect ingredient that Hilie wanted to test, So
for example, the borax. Yeah, that's going to make you
question this free 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 I table, and that was
that meant that they were eating at a dining table
(08:18):
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 pleasant though. So they agreed that they would
(08:39):
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 the side exactly, And
each participant had to record his weight, temperature, and pulse
before each meal and what he ate. They also had
to submit urine and fece samples daily. A so not
(09:01):
definitely gross all around, very gross, but 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
knew that they were eating potential poisons, but they all
(09:23):
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
in the first place. Yeah, I've seen different examples mentioned
(09:45):
roast chicken, braised beef, buttered asparagus, so and 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 Wiley put the substance
such as borax in, they ended up avoiding that particular
item in the first couple of trials. So it tastes funny. Yeah.
(10:05):
For example, if Wiley 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
(10:26):
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 a food item. Yeah. And another interesting point,
(10:47):
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 newspapers think of
of an even better name for the whole thing and
dubbed the volunteer test subjects the Poison Squad, and the
(11:10):
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 lou
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
(11:31):
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 fare would drive most men insane. Next week he'll
give them mothballs a La 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
(11:52):
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 science e. It
seemed kind of fun. Well not that fun, I guess,
but different at least, yeah, compared to most traditional scientific
(12:15):
study 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 these guys. And Wiley did worry about
(12:36):
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,
(12:56):
the coffee and sooth of baked chickory smells and a
terrapin taste like roast vell. Yeah, and he also started
talking to 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.
(13:16):
I mean, 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
(13:37):
off the 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 Thirtie nine six,
(13:59):
President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drugs Act,
which was largely 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 while he
got a new job out of it too. Yeah, he
got to oversee this new acts administration, and that's kind
(14:20):
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
(14:43):
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 things that it featured in
(15:04):
the magazine on its pages. So while he added his
own lab and 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. So 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
(15:26):
fight 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 and approved seal also became a real symbol
of responsible industry of safe food, and it's still probably
(15:46):
means something to consumers today, I'd say, yeah, for sure.
And Whiley's accomplishment is felt in other ways to borax sale,
silic acid, formaldehyde, and copper sulfate, all of these things
are long gone from the food additive market, which yeah,
thank goodness. And that Pure Feud and Drug Act that
Wiley championed that led to the more famous night Federal
(16:07):
Food Drug and cosmetic act. So changes, big changes, definitely
um and as performer 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 there,
you didn't turn out so badly for everyone. Yeah. I
(16:30):
like to imagine maybe Poison Squad was on their business
cards or something after the fact. Oh yeah, I would
wear that go into the restaurant business or something. I
don't know. I think you'd always be suspicious though, into
the restaurant business, I would be. I'm suspicious now after
reading this. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.
(16:53):
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heard an email address or Facebook U r L or
something similar over the course of the show, that could
be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast
at I Heart radio dot com. Our old how stuff
works email address no longer works, and you can find
us all over social media at missed in History and
(17:15):
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wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Happy Saturday, Everybody. One of our episodes this week was
on the Swill Milk scandal, and so we thought for
our Saturday Classic today we would stick with this theme
of adulterated food. This episode is from previous hosts Sarah
and Bablina and it came out on May eleven of eleven.
It's on chemist Harvey Washington Wiley, who studied effects of
(00:23):
food additives on human volunteers who became known as the
Poison Squad. His work eventually contributed to the passage of
the Pure Food and Drug Act of nineteen o six,
and he continued to campaign against food adulteration afterward. So overall,
at least in my opinion, this episode is not quite
as gross as some of the things that we talked
about in the Swill Milk episode, but it does cover
(00:47):
the physical effects of eating things like borax. We've also
had various listener requests to do an episode on the
Poison Squad, so for those folks particularly enjoy Welcome to
Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production of My
Heart Radio. Hello and welcome to the podcast. I'm Deblina
(01:09):
Chok reboarding and I'm Sair Douting and when you walk
into the grocery store these days, there's a lot of
things to kind of worry about, 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
(01:30):
levels and fish and bacterial contamination. You know, there was
that news recently that half of all the meat sold
in the United States is tainted with drug resistance staff. Yeah,
that 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
(01:51):
salmonilla egg recall a few years ago, there was the
peanut butter scare. Yea when you couldn't eat certain granola bars.
Just I remember my mom calling me up about that, like,
don't eat need bars, I might have peanut butter. 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
(02:12):
hundred years ago in the US when there were really
no labeling requirements, no safety tests, and no one really
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
(02:32):
you've ever done like a dissection in biology class or
something and smelled the stuff. But that's when the chemist
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 Wiley stepped in, first mainly
trying to change things solely through legislation, and then through
(02:55):
something that came to be known as the Poison Squad,
and that was a kind of human experiment through which
Wiley tested substances used in food that he believed to
be harmful. And this became kind of a media sensation
of 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
(03:16):
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. 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
(03:38):
in this real evangelical background with a strong emphasis on
doing the right thing, which is 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 Army during the
Civil War, but he never really saw combat, so he
(03:58):
returned to finish up at and Over and then went
on to get a medical degree at Indiana Medical College,
and he studied medical science for a 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
(04:20):
main thoughts and main research had to do with honey,
and he found basically that companies were adulterating honey, 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
(04:41):
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 eight 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 the came at a good time too, because he
had some trouble with the administration at Perdue around that time,
(05:04):
trying 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.
Oh yeah, how scandalous. Definitely. So his main 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
(05:24):
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, 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
(05:46):
we're referring to when we talked about legislation that he
contributed to. But none of these bills that none of
them went anywhere. They all kind of failed. So something
had to be done though, I mean, adulteration of food
was a real problem. There were instances of sanded sugar,
watered milk, sawdust, enhanced flour, which just sounds crazy, just
(06:07):
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. Yeah, so
people didn't know where their food was even coming from.
And according to an article by Bernard A. Weissburger in
American Heritage, late nineteenth century technology brought more additives into
(06:29):
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, and Wiley's
first big concern that we mentioned earlier borax. Yeah. So,
since manufacturers weren't required to prove preservative safety, Wiley asked
(06:50):
Congress in for money to do the tests himself. He
wanted to learn, quote, whether preservatives should ever be used
or not, and if so, what preservatives and in what quantities.
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
(07:13):
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.
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. Yeah,
(07:37):
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
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, but here's the catch. Each meal would
(07:57):
include one suspect ingredient that Hilie wanted to test, So
for example, the borax. Yeah, that's going to make you
question this free 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 I table, and that was
that meant that they were eating at a dining table
(08:18):
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 pleasant though. So they agreed that they would
(08:39):
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 the side exactly, And
each participant had to record his weight, temperature, and pulse
before each meal and what he ate. They also had
to submit urine and fece samples daily. A so not
(09:01):
definitely gross all around, very gross, but 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
knew that they were eating potential poisons, but they all
(09:23):
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
in the first place. Yeah, I've seen different examples mentioned
(09:45):
roast chicken, braised beef, buttered asparagus, so and 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 Wiley put the substance
such as borax in, they ended up avoiding that particular
item in the first couple of trials. So it tastes funny. Yeah.
(10:05):
For example, if Wiley 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
(10:26):
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 a food item. Yeah. And another interesting point,
(10:47):
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 newspapers think of
of an even better name for the whole thing and
dubbed the volunteer test subjects the Poison Squad, and the
(11:10):
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 lou
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
(11:31):
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 fare would drive most men insane. Next week he'll
give them mothballs a La 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
(11:52):
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 science e. It
seemed kind of fun. Well not that fun, I guess,
but different at least, yeah, compared to most traditional scientific
(12:15):
study 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 these guys. And Wiley did worry about
(12:36):
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,
(12:56):
the coffee and sooth of baked chickory smells and a
terrapin taste like roast vell. Yeah, and he also started
talking to 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.
(13:16):
I mean, 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
(13:37):
off the 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 Thirtie nine six,
(13:59):
President Theodore Roosevelt signed the Pure Food and Drugs Act,
which was largely 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 while he
got a new job out of it too. Yeah, he
got to oversee this new acts administration, and that's kind
(14:20):
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
(14:43):
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 things that it featured in
(15:04):
the magazine on its pages. So while he added his
own lab and 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. So 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
(15:26):
fight 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 and approved seal also became a real symbol
of responsible industry of safe food, and it's still probably
(15:46):
means something to consumers today, I'd say, yeah, for sure.
And Whiley's accomplishment is felt in other ways to borax sale,
silic acid, formaldehyde, and copper sulfate, all of these things
are long gone from the food additive market, which yeah,
thank goodness. And that Pure Feud and Drug Act that
Wiley championed that led to the more famous night Federal
(16:07):
Food Drug and cosmetic act. So changes, big changes, definitely
um and as performer 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 there,
you didn't turn out so badly for everyone. Yeah. I
(16:30):
like to imagine maybe Poison Squad was on their business
cards or something after the fact. Oh yeah, I would
wear that go into the restaurant business or something. I
don't know. I think you'd always be suspicious though, into
the restaurant business, I would be. I'm suspicious now after
reading this. Thanks so much for joining us on this Saturday.
(16:53):
Since this episode is out of the archive, if you
heard an email address or Facebook U r L or
something similar over the course of the show, that could
be obsolete now. Our current email address is History Podcast
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(17:15):
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