The Scientist Behind the Scenes
"We sit at a table delightfully spread, and teeming with good things to eat. And daintily finger the cream-tinted bread, just needing to make it complete--a film of the butter so yellow and sweet, well suited to make every minute a dream of delight. And yet while we eat, we cannot help asking 'What's in it?' The wine which you drink never heard of a grape, but of tannin and coal tar is made. And you could not be certain, except for their shape, that the eggs by a chicken were laid. And the salad, which bears such an innocent look and whispers of fields that are green, is covered with germs, each armed with a hook to grapple with liver and spleen. The banquet how fine, don't begin it till you think of the past and future and sigh, 'How I wonder, how I wonder, what's in it.'"
~ Harvey Wiley
Harvey Washington Wiley, Science History Institute.
"It was my first participation in the fray..."
~ Harvey Wiley after the honey companies he exposed tried to smear his name.
Harvey Washington Wiley, who would become known as the "Father of the FDA," grew up on a farm in Indiana. For years, Wiley conducted experiments on American food. However, when he started releasing his research publicly, the food industry tried to silence him. Additionally, because the food companies were paying off the government, it became impossible for Wiley to notify the people. In response, he recruited 12 willing men to particpiate in a chemical experiment. These men were called the "Poison Squad." Wiley wanted to know what would happen to a person after they continually consumed the chemicals that were usually found in the food on the market. After years of the bill being stalled, Wiley's work finally paid off with the passing of the act on June 30, 1906. And due to his contributions, the Act of 1906 is referred to as "The Wiley Act."
Wiley's "Poison Squad"
"The consumer is entitled to know the nature of the substances he purchases, and to be assured that their food is pure and wholesome."
~ Harvey Wiley testified before Congress.
Members of the "Poison Squad," U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Wiley would serve the 12 men food that was laced with borax, copper sulfate, or salicylic acid etc. to study the effects they had on the human body.
"The borax diet is beginning to show its effect on Dr. Wiley’s government-fed boarders at the Bureau of Chemistry, and last night when the official weights were taken just before the Christmas dinner the six guests who are taking the chemical course showed a slight decrease in avoirdupois . . . To have lost flesh on Christmas Day, when probably everybody else in Washington gained more or less from feasting, was regarded by the boarders themselves as doubly significant."
~ A part of a Washington Post article discussing the "Poison Squad."
Volunteer letter for "Poison Squad," U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
Despite the danger of the task at hand, the "Poison Squad" had an enormous amount of volunteers sign up after Wiley promised to feed them and pay them.
"If ever you should visit the Smithsonian Institute,
Look out that Professor Wiley doesn’t make you a recruit.
He’s got a lot of fellows there that tell him how they feel,
They take a batch of poison every time they eat a meal.
For breakfast they get cyanide of liver, coffin shaped,
For dinner, undertaker’s pie, all trimmed with crepe;
For supper, arsenic fritters, fried in appetizing shade,
And late at night they get a prussic acid lemonade.
They may get over it, but they’ll never look the same.
That kind of a bill of fare would drive most men insane.
Next week he’ll give them moth balls,
a LA Newburgh, or else plain.
They may get over it, but they’ll never look the same."
~ Lew Dockstade, “They’ll Never Look the Same”