July 7, 2021 • 13 mins
In the 1920s, before the era of consumer protection, a poison entered the medicine supply and killed more than 100 people before the pubic health disaster could be stopped.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:04):
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's shocked just a couple of mellow dudes about to
talk about one of the worst public health disasters in
American history. All right, that's right. And this one came
about because we were just talking about this in a
full length episode and little Josh he said, hey, we
(00:25):
should do a short stuff on that thing, and being
Bata boom. Two days later, we're doing it. Yeah, not
even two days. I think it's the next day and
in podcast land time, so it just came out. Yeah,
we activated our immediate response team, which which is us. Yes,
and we're gonna do one on the elixir sulfa nylamide disaster. Sure, all,
(00:53):
how would you say it self selfonilamide? That's what I'm
going with. All right, Hey man, potato potato sulfonilla minds
whole finilomide. Let's call the whole thing off exactly, which,
by the way, I know this is a short stuff,
so there's really no no time to discourse. But I
hate that song let's call a hold hang off? Yah
(01:15):
hate it. Yeah, I told you I think one time
about my friend Andrew and Los Angeles, whose friend auditioned
with that song for a big musical production, and it
never heard it really and didn't realize that you're supposed
to say them differently. So you say tomato and I
say tomato. You've just seen that the sheet music, I guess. So,
(01:40):
I mean it's the story. I don't know if it
checks out, but it's like Andy Kaufman performance, aren't piece.
So we're not talking about that. We're talking we're going
back to seven. Uh, back in the time where there
was such a thing as the f d A. There
was something called the nineteen oh six Food Drug and
Cosmetics Act no Food Pure and Drug Act, Sorry, of
(02:01):
which we talked about yesterday UM. And one of the
things that it did was it said, there is this thing,
this Bureau of Chemistry, that will become the f d A.
But they're just kind of they're they're not really good
at what they do yet because we don't have the
regulation to let them do what they do. And so
under that context, the idea of UM medicines was pretty
(02:25):
much like the Wild West in America at the time. Yes,
I think it's putting it very kindly. Earlier in that
same decade, there was a microbiologist named Gerhard Domac and said, hey,
I made a great discovery. This compound uh self, annylamide
or nilamide acts as an antibiotic against strep and we
(02:48):
can help strep throat and Pharmaceutical company said this is great.
Let's pump out this powder and these tablets. And then
someone at the Mass and Guild, the se Mass and
Guild Pharmaceutical Company of Tennessee, said, you know what, people
really want this in liquid form. Get to work. Yeah.
There was a guy, the chief chemist was Dr Harold Watkins,
(03:09):
and he started, you know, getting to work because they
told him too, and that was his job and that
was that, and so um he started um tinkering around.
He needed a solvent something to dissolve the powdered sulfonillamide
into a solution water because it doesn't just automatically dissolve.
So he used the solvent die ethylene glycol, and he
(03:31):
ended up coming up Yeah, just just seeing that on
a label somewhere, wouldn't she'd be like, I'm going to
second guess this decision. He went a whole hog on it,
and so he came up with Elixir Sulfonillamide, which was
ten percent sulfenillamide, the antibiotic, sixteen percent water, and seventy
two die ethylene glycol. Yeah, and it gave it a
(03:54):
sweet flavor, so the taste was good. It gave it
a pinkish hue. He added a little bit of raspberry
extract and said, let's hit the market. Yeah, and uh,
I guess I kind of spoiled it a second ago.
But it is a deadly poison and as you mentioned
in the other episode, it's related to Annie freeze, which
is not good to drink, and it kills you in
(04:16):
horrific ways. It it really recks, uh, your kidney. Your
kidneys will eventually shut down, but along the way, UM,
you will be vomiting and agitated and have seizures and convulsions, terrible,
intense pain, unrelenting pain. And they didn't know this because
they didn't care carry out any test on this stuff,
(04:37):
not just to make it, but to sell it. They
didn't even test it out before they put it on
the shelves, mainly because the law didn't say you had
to at the time. No, But did you see that
quote about UM that described the Massingulle company. I think
even among you know, under the law. They were kind
of seen as rendegades, right. Yeah, the quote was from
(04:57):
the investigator. Apparently they just road drugs together and if
they don't explode, they're placed on sale. And that's at
that time, like in the thirties, right. So the mass
and Got company they made two hundred and forty gallons
initially of elix or sulfanillamide of this deadly, deadly poison
and started shipping it around the country as medicine in
(05:20):
September of ven and within just a couple of weeks
the first desks were starting to be reported. Yeah, and
it wasn't like these days where they find something like
oh this could cause a risk of cancer down the road,
like you drink this stuff and you die. Yeah. It
was that bad. Yeah, So I say we take a um,
(05:42):
we take a break. The sulfanillamia elixers out there is
starting to kill people, and we need to get some
commercial messages in all right, So Chuck, The A m
(06:11):
A was around at the time. It was our poison
control episode. Remember we said the NIMA was formed in
part as a response to this idea that people were
being poisoned and I didn't know why. So the A
m A Like they were keeping track of sulf vanilla
mid but they had not heard of this se mass
and guilt stuff, and they started getting reports of people
taking it and dying from it, and they wanted to
(06:32):
get to the bottom of that. Too sweet. Yeah, So
they called him up and they said, hey, do you
mind just send over that ingredient list our way and
mass and Gil did. And here's the thing, they didn't
really realize at the time what the deal was, Like
they had to do all these they weren't like, wait
a minute, it's got diethylene glycol in it, that's what's
(06:54):
killing people. Because it was had only been around, I
think less than a decade or so, and obviously they
didn't know where they wouldn't have used that, Like I
don't think they willfully try to kill people. No, No,
certainly not. But the A M as you know, they
had to do test and they started sort of ruling
things out, and they eventually found out that like, yeah,
seventy whatever two percent of this stuff is a deadly
(07:15):
poison and we need to start getting the message out
to newspapers and radios and telling people this um. But
you know, that's tough to do in those years. It
is because um, as we'll see, the f d A
sent a bunch of agents out and they were they
were trying to get in touch with the traveling salesman
(07:35):
for Mass and Gil, who were like, you know, they
didn't have cell phones. They would you know, maybe leave
a forwarding address at a hotel that you'd have to
go shake down and the road. You go, yeah, you
go chase that down and you find that they were
already two cities beyond that last forwarding address, and um
and they're doing this in the context of like this
(07:57):
this race against the clock, that there's two pretty gallons
of this stuff out there and people are being prescribed
it and you're trying to find this traveling salesman who
can point you in the direction of where these things
were shipped to. Yeah, they also got in touch with
Mass and Gil and they went, yeah, we know, uh,
it's killing people and we're trying to get it back
(08:18):
to We sent out these memos and on the wire
and these telegrams saying that you know, we'd like the
stuff back and it could be dangerous. And then the
FDA said, no, man, send different telegrams saying you have
to do this it is killing people. And they did,
I mean, they complied that. You get the impression that
(08:38):
the Massing company was rather reluctant partner to the f
D a UM, but they did eventually do they took
all the right steps that the FDA was kind of
directing them too. Um. And so the FDA sent out
all those field agents, and the field agents would have trouble,
you know, tracking down a salesperson sometimes when they got
in touch with the one of these sales and they
(09:00):
would be worried about the company's image, so they would
just not tell them who they sold these things too,
and so they'd have to go through sales slips, you know,
pharmacies around the country and um. When they would finally
get in touch with doctors and pharmacists, they'd be worried
about their legal liability, so they wouldn't be forthcoming with
any of this information too. It must have just been
(09:21):
really frustrating, you know. Yeah. I mean, so you've got
doctors that aren't really cooperating some of them did. I
think there was one story that you found where, uh,
a doctor actually postponed his wedding just to help find
one patient whose family had moved to the mountains with
a sick kid and took a bottle of that stuff
along that the doctor had given him. Uh. But you know,
(09:42):
some were more cooperative than others. I think the f
d A they didn't have the teeth at the time
that they do now, and they could not force a
recall of a drug. Um, they were able to through
sort of a loophole in that it was called elixir
in on the label it was labeled as such, but
apparently in less Uh, it contains alcohol. It's not an elixir,
(10:06):
isn't that right? Yeah, it should have been called solution
sulfonilla mide. And the fact that they called it elixer
meant that technically it was mislabeled, and the FDA did
have the ability to seize drugs that were mislabeled under
the ninety Act. Yeah, but that was it. It's like
getting al capone on tax evasion. They were able to
get this this antibiotic back on this technicality that it
(10:30):
was misnamed, But that's what they proceeded under, and so
they were able to eventually get two hundred and thirty
four gallons and one point of the two hundred and
forty gallons that have been produced. Yeah, very great effort. Um.
I think in the end, a hundred and five men,
women and kids were killed. I think, uh or was it?
(10:53):
That's total right? Yes, see, adults and thirty four kids.
And they said if they hadn't I mean that loophole
hadn't existed, that amount of liquid would have ended up
killing about four thousand people. Yeah, and I mean depending
on how they were prescribed, how much they were prescribed. Um.
They some of them died in two days, some of
them took three weeks to die, and they all died
(11:14):
agonizing dusk. But the idea that you know, thousands more
people could have died had the FDA not been able
to do something about it is pretty you know, he's
got to wipe your forehead with that one. Yeah. Um.
Doctor Harold Watkins that we mentioned, the Mass and Gill
chief chemist, he took his own life very sadly. There
was a lot of survivals guilt, a lot of physicians
(11:35):
as well as people that worked at Mass and Gille. Um,
we're just wrecked with guilt afterward for a long time. Um.
One of the doctors from Mount olive Um wrote to
the President to f d R and said, please pass
some more oversight measures over medicines because six of my patients,
including my best friend, are now dead because of what
(11:57):
I gave them. Yeah, that doctor I have to give
shout out is quoted in a FDA consumer magazine article
with the title Taste of Raspberries Taste of death. Colon
no joke, that's it. No no colon comments. Then all right,
it should have been colon The Rise and Fall of
(12:18):
the Deadly elictor there was another death related to a
to chuck. Um. Remember how we were saying, You said
that the FDA just didn't have any the teeth to
to make to enforce this. Well they got the teeth.
There have been legislation kicking around in Washington to update
that UM, that nine six Act and UM. When this happened,
(12:39):
you know, the public outcry was so much that it
helped this logic and get it past. But it was
under the championship of UM Senator Royal Copeland of New
York who sponsored that bill, and he dropped dead of
exhaustion four days after it was passed. Whenever I see that,
I think in what else, Yeah, like how many cigarettes
(13:01):
didn't smoke? I think there was a what else? For sure.
But you know, I mean, like, I think I think
there was some truth to it. I agreed, though, I
think that that was I think that's wise to take
died of exhaustion as a grain of salt. Agreed, you
got any salted eat, You can die from salt, just
it has nothing to do with exhaustion. I got nothing else.
(13:21):
Good when promise, uh, promise kept yes fulfilled the next
day even uh and since we're done everybody, that means short.
Stuff is stuff you should know is a production of
iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(13:43):
to your favorite shows.
Hey, and welcome to the short Stuff. I'm Josh, and
there's shocked just a couple of mellow dudes about to
talk about one of the worst public health disasters in
American history. All right, that's right. And this one came
about because we were just talking about this in a
full length episode and little Josh he said, hey, we
(00:25):
should do a short stuff on that thing, and being
Bata boom. Two days later, we're doing it. Yeah, not
even two days. I think it's the next day and
in podcast land time, so it just came out. Yeah,
we activated our immediate response team, which which is us. Yes,
and we're gonna do one on the elixir sulfa nylamide disaster. Sure, all,
(00:53):
how would you say it self selfonilamide? That's what I'm
going with. All right, Hey man, potato potato sulfonilla minds
whole finilomide. Let's call the whole thing off exactly, which,
by the way, I know this is a short stuff,
so there's really no no time to discourse. But I
hate that song let's call a hold hang off? Yah
(01:15):
hate it. Yeah, I told you I think one time
about my friend Andrew and Los Angeles, whose friend auditioned
with that song for a big musical production, and it
never heard it really and didn't realize that you're supposed
to say them differently. So you say tomato and I
say tomato. You've just seen that the sheet music, I guess. So,
(01:40):
I mean it's the story. I don't know if it
checks out, but it's like Andy Kaufman performance, aren't piece.
So we're not talking about that. We're talking we're going
back to seven. Uh, back in the time where there
was such a thing as the f d A. There
was something called the nineteen oh six Food Drug and
Cosmetics Act no Food Pure and Drug Act, Sorry, of
(02:01):
which we talked about yesterday UM. And one of the
things that it did was it said, there is this thing,
this Bureau of Chemistry, that will become the f d A.
But they're just kind of they're they're not really good
at what they do yet because we don't have the
regulation to let them do what they do. And so
under that context, the idea of UM medicines was pretty
(02:25):
much like the Wild West in America at the time. Yes,
I think it's putting it very kindly. Earlier in that
same decade, there was a microbiologist named Gerhard Domac and said, hey,
I made a great discovery. This compound uh self, annylamide
or nilamide acts as an antibiotic against strep and we
(02:48):
can help strep throat and Pharmaceutical company said this is great.
Let's pump out this powder and these tablets. And then
someone at the Mass and Guild, the se Mass and
Guild Pharmaceutical Company of Tennessee, said, you know what, people
really want this in liquid form. Get to work. Yeah.
There was a guy, the chief chemist was Dr Harold Watkins,
(03:09):
and he started, you know, getting to work because they
told him too, and that was his job and that
was that, and so um he started um tinkering around.
He needed a solvent something to dissolve the powdered sulfonillamide
into a solution water because it doesn't just automatically dissolve.
So he used the solvent die ethylene glycol, and he
(03:31):
ended up coming up Yeah, just just seeing that on
a label somewhere, wouldn't she'd be like, I'm going to
second guess this decision. He went a whole hog on it,
and so he came up with Elixir Sulfonillamide, which was
ten percent sulfenillamide, the antibiotic, sixteen percent water, and seventy
two die ethylene glycol. Yeah, and it gave it a
(03:54):
sweet flavor, so the taste was good. It gave it
a pinkish hue. He added a little bit of raspberry
extract and said, let's hit the market. Yeah, and uh,
I guess I kind of spoiled it a second ago.
But it is a deadly poison and as you mentioned
in the other episode, it's related to Annie freeze, which
is not good to drink, and it kills you in
(04:16):
horrific ways. It it really recks, uh, your kidney. Your
kidneys will eventually shut down, but along the way, UM,
you will be vomiting and agitated and have seizures and convulsions, terrible,
intense pain, unrelenting pain. And they didn't know this because
they didn't care carry out any test on this stuff,
(04:37):
not just to make it, but to sell it. They
didn't even test it out before they put it on
the shelves, mainly because the law didn't say you had
to at the time. No, But did you see that
quote about UM that described the Massingulle company. I think
even among you know, under the law. They were kind
of seen as rendegades, right. Yeah, the quote was from
(04:57):
the investigator. Apparently they just road drugs together and if
they don't explode, they're placed on sale. And that's at
that time, like in the thirties, right. So the mass
and Got company they made two hundred and forty gallons
initially of elix or sulfanillamide of this deadly, deadly poison
and started shipping it around the country as medicine in
(05:20):
September of ven and within just a couple of weeks
the first desks were starting to be reported. Yeah, and
it wasn't like these days where they find something like
oh this could cause a risk of cancer down the road,
like you drink this stuff and you die. Yeah. It
was that bad. Yeah, So I say we take a um,
(05:42):
we take a break. The sulfanillamia elixers out there is
starting to kill people, and we need to get some
commercial messages in all right, So Chuck, The A m
(06:11):
A was around at the time. It was our poison
control episode. Remember we said the NIMA was formed in
part as a response to this idea that people were
being poisoned and I didn't know why. So the A
m A Like they were keeping track of sulf vanilla
mid but they had not heard of this se mass
and guilt stuff, and they started getting reports of people
taking it and dying from it, and they wanted to
(06:32):
get to the bottom of that. Too sweet. Yeah, So
they called him up and they said, hey, do you
mind just send over that ingredient list our way and
mass and Gil did. And here's the thing, they didn't
really realize at the time what the deal was, Like
they had to do all these they weren't like, wait
a minute, it's got diethylene glycol in it, that's what's
(06:54):
killing people. Because it was had only been around, I
think less than a decade or so, and obviously they
didn't know where they wouldn't have used that, Like I
don't think they willfully try to kill people. No, No,
certainly not. But the A M as you know, they
had to do test and they started sort of ruling
things out, and they eventually found out that like, yeah,
seventy whatever two percent of this stuff is a deadly
(07:15):
poison and we need to start getting the message out
to newspapers and radios and telling people this um. But
you know, that's tough to do in those years. It
is because um, as we'll see, the f d A
sent a bunch of agents out and they were they
were trying to get in touch with the traveling salesman
(07:35):
for Mass and Gil, who were like, you know, they
didn't have cell phones. They would you know, maybe leave
a forwarding address at a hotel that you'd have to
go shake down and the road. You go, yeah, you
go chase that down and you find that they were
already two cities beyond that last forwarding address, and um
and they're doing this in the context of like this
(07:57):
this race against the clock, that there's two pretty gallons
of this stuff out there and people are being prescribed
it and you're trying to find this traveling salesman who
can point you in the direction of where these things
were shipped to. Yeah, they also got in touch with
Mass and Gil and they went, yeah, we know, uh,
it's killing people and we're trying to get it back
(08:18):
to We sent out these memos and on the wire
and these telegrams saying that you know, we'd like the
stuff back and it could be dangerous. And then the
FDA said, no, man, send different telegrams saying you have
to do this it is killing people. And they did,
I mean, they complied that. You get the impression that
(08:38):
the Massing company was rather reluctant partner to the f
D a UM, but they did eventually do they took
all the right steps that the FDA was kind of
directing them too. Um. And so the FDA sent out
all those field agents, and the field agents would have trouble,
you know, tracking down a salesperson sometimes when they got
in touch with the one of these sales and they
(09:00):
would be worried about the company's image, so they would
just not tell them who they sold these things too,
and so they'd have to go through sales slips, you know,
pharmacies around the country and um. When they would finally
get in touch with doctors and pharmacists, they'd be worried
about their legal liability, so they wouldn't be forthcoming with
any of this information too. It must have just been
(09:21):
really frustrating, you know. Yeah. I mean, so you've got
doctors that aren't really cooperating some of them did. I
think there was one story that you found where, uh,
a doctor actually postponed his wedding just to help find
one patient whose family had moved to the mountains with
a sick kid and took a bottle of that stuff
along that the doctor had given him. Uh. But you know,
(09:42):
some were more cooperative than others. I think the f
d A they didn't have the teeth at the time
that they do now, and they could not force a
recall of a drug. Um, they were able to through
sort of a loophole in that it was called elixir
in on the label it was labeled as such, but
apparently in less Uh, it contains alcohol. It's not an elixir,
(10:06):
isn't that right? Yeah, it should have been called solution
sulfonilla mide. And the fact that they called it elixer
meant that technically it was mislabeled, and the FDA did
have the ability to seize drugs that were mislabeled under
the ninety Act. Yeah, but that was it. It's like
getting al capone on tax evasion. They were able to
get this this antibiotic back on this technicality that it
(10:30):
was misnamed, But that's what they proceeded under, and so
they were able to eventually get two hundred and thirty
four gallons and one point of the two hundred and
forty gallons that have been produced. Yeah, very great effort. Um.
I think in the end, a hundred and five men,
women and kids were killed. I think, uh or was it?
(10:53):
That's total right? Yes, see, adults and thirty four kids.
And they said if they hadn't I mean that loophole
hadn't existed, that amount of liquid would have ended up
killing about four thousand people. Yeah, and I mean depending
on how they were prescribed, how much they were prescribed. Um.
They some of them died in two days, some of
them took three weeks to die, and they all died
(11:14):
agonizing dusk. But the idea that you know, thousands more
people could have died had the FDA not been able
to do something about it is pretty you know, he's
got to wipe your forehead with that one. Yeah. Um.
Doctor Harold Watkins that we mentioned, the Mass and Gill
chief chemist, he took his own life very sadly. There
was a lot of survivals guilt, a lot of physicians
(11:35):
as well as people that worked at Mass and Gille. Um,
we're just wrecked with guilt afterward for a long time. Um.
One of the doctors from Mount olive Um wrote to
the President to f d R and said, please pass
some more oversight measures over medicines because six of my patients,
including my best friend, are now dead because of what
(11:57):
I gave them. Yeah, that doctor I have to give
shout out is quoted in a FDA consumer magazine article
with the title Taste of Raspberries Taste of death. Colon
no joke, that's it. No no colon comments. Then all right,
it should have been colon The Rise and Fall of
(12:18):
the Deadly elictor there was another death related to a
to chuck. Um. Remember how we were saying, You said
that the FDA just didn't have any the teeth to
to make to enforce this. Well they got the teeth.
There have been legislation kicking around in Washington to update
that UM, that nine six Act and UM. When this happened,
(12:39):
you know, the public outcry was so much that it
helped this logic and get it past. But it was
under the championship of UM Senator Royal Copeland of New
York who sponsored that bill, and he dropped dead of
exhaustion four days after it was passed. Whenever I see that,
I think in what else, Yeah, like how many cigarettes
(13:01):
didn't smoke? I think there was a what else? For sure.
But you know, I mean, like, I think I think
there was some truth to it. I agreed, though, I
think that that was I think that's wise to take
died of exhaustion as a grain of salt. Agreed, you
got any salted eat, You can die from salt, just
it has nothing to do with exhaustion. I got nothing else.
(13:21):
Good when promise, uh, promise kept yes fulfilled the next
day even uh and since we're done everybody, that means short.
Stuff is stuff you should know is a production of
iHeart Radio. For more podcasts my heart Radio, visit the
i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
(13:43):
to your favorite shows.
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