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