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Deborah Blum - The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

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Deborah Blum The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century
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The Poison Squad: One Chemist’s Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century: summary, description and annotation

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From Pulitzer Prize winner andNew York Times-bestselling author Deborah Blum, the dramatic true story of how food was made safe in the United States and the heroes, led by the inimitable Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, who fought for change
By the end of nineteenth century, food was dangerous. Lethal, even. Milk might contain formaldehyde, most often used to embalm corpses. Decaying meat was preserved with both salicylic acid, a pharmaceutical chemical, and borax, a compound first identified as a cleaning product. This was not by accident; food manufacturers had rushed to embrace the rise of industrial chemistry, and were knowingly selling harmful products. Unchecked by government regulation, basic safety, or even labelling requirements, they put profit before the health of their customers. By some estimates, in New York City alone, thousands of children were killed by embalmed milk every year. Citizens--activists, journalists, scientists, and womens groups--began agitating for change. But even as protective measures were enacted in Europe, American corporations blocked even modest regulations. Then, in 1883, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, a chemistry professor from Purdue University, was named chief chemist of the agriculture department, and the agency began methodically investigating food and drink fraud, even conducting shocking human tests on groups of young men who came to be known as, The Poison Squad.
Over the next thirty years, a titanic struggle took place, with the courageous and fascinating Dr. Wiley campaigning indefatigably for food safety and consumer protection. Together with a gallant cast, including the muckraking reporter Upton Sinclair, whose fiction revealed the horrific truth about the Chicago stockyards; Fannie Farmer, then the most famous cookbook author in the country; and Henry J. Heinz, one of the few food producers who actively advocated for pure food, Dr. Wiley changed history. When the landmark 1906 Food and Drug Act was finally passed, it was known across the land, as Dr. Wileys Law.
Blum brings to life this timeless and hugely satisfying David and Goliath tale with righteous verve and style, driving home the moral imperative of confronting corporate greed and government corruption with a bracing clarity, which speaks resoundingly to the enormous social and political challenges we face today.

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A LSO BY D EBORAH B LUM The Poisoners Handbook Ghost Hunters Love at Goon Park - photo 1
A LSO BY D EBORAH B LUM

The Poisoners Handbook

Ghost Hunters

Love at Goon Park

Sex on the Brain

The Monkey Wars

A Field Guide for Science Writers

Angel Killer

PENGUIN PRESS An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC 375 Hudson Street New - photo 2

PENGUIN PRESS

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

375 Hudson Street

New York, New York 10014

penguin.com

Copyright 2018 by Deborah Blum

Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

Illustration credits appear on .

ISBN 9781594205149 (hardcover)

ISBN 9780525560289 (ebook)

Version_1

To Peter, who makes all things possible

CONTENTS
I WONDER WHATS IN IT We sit at a table delightfully spread And teeming with - photo 3
I WONDER WHATS IN IT We sit at a table delightfully spread And teeming with - photo 4

I WONDER WHATS IN IT

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, Whats in it?

Oh, maybe this bread contains alum or chalk

Or sawdust chopped up very fine

Or gypsum in powder about which they talk,

Terra alba just out of the mine.

And our faith in the butter is apt to be weak,

For we havent a good place to pin it

Annatos so yellow and beef fat so sleek

Oh, I wish I could know what is in it.

The pepper perhaps contains cocoanut shells,

And the mustard is cottonseed meal;

And the coffee, in sooth, of baked chicory smells,

And the terrapin tastes like roast veal.

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, dont begin it

Till you think of the past and the future and sigh,

How I wonder, I wonder, whats in it.

H ARVEY W ASHINGTON W ILEY , 1899

CAST OF CHARACTERS This account of Harvey Wileys life and his battle for the - photo 5
CAST OF CHARACTERS

This account of Harvey Wileys life and his battle for the enactment and enforcement of the United States first national law regulating food, drink, and drugs includes many people whose lives or careers intersected with or influenced Wileys. Among them were all U.S. presidents from Chester A. Arthur to Calvin Coolidge.

Others included:

Jane Addams : The Chicago activist and reformer, cofounder of the nations first settlement house, also cofounded the National Consumers League.

Nelson Aldrich : This powerful and wealthy U.S. senator, a Rhode Island Republican so influential in government that the press nicknamed him General Manager of the Nation, was a friend to many major corporations and strongly opposed the idea of regulating food and drink for safety.

Russell A. Alger : As secretary of war, he somewhat reluctantly ordered investigations into the food that had been supplied to army troops during the Spanish-American War.

Robert M. Allen : The chief food chemist for the state of Kentucky was an outspoken advocate of pure-food legislation and a valuable Wiley ally.

Carl L. Alsberg : Succeeding Wiley as chief of the USDA Bureau of Chemistry, he continued to pursue many of his predecessors key cases, including lawsuits against the Coca-Cola Company and the producers of saccharin.

Thomas Antisell : This early USDA chief chemist investigated food adulteration during the 1860s and found it a problem but acknowledged that there was no mechanism for regulation.

J. Ogden Armour : The heir to founder Philip Armours Armour and Company meatpacking in Chicago; he, like his father, opposed food safety regulations. The company was the basis for Upton Sinclairs fictional Anderson food-processing company in his best-selling novel The Jungle.

Ray Stannard Baker : A muckraking McClures journalist, he advised his friend Upton Sinclair on proposed revisions to The Jungle.

Jesse Park Battershall : Author of a leading book, Food Adulteration and Its Detection, the nineteenth-century chemist blasted processors, bemoaned the lack of regulation, and described home purity tests that could be used by anxious family cooks.

Albert Beveridge : A progressive Republican senator from Indiana, he played a role in pushing pure-food legislation, especially the Meat Inspection Law of 1906.

Willard Bigelow : The lead chemist for the Hygienic Table Trials, also known as the Poison Squad, he was a dedicated ally of Wileys and a dedicated chemist, once described as a man of blue blazes and sulfurous smokes.

Charles J. Bonaparte : The U.S. attorney general under Theodore Roosevelt issued a key ruling agreeing with Wiley on whiskey-labeling requirements.

George Rothwell Brown : A Washington Post reporter, he made the Poison Squad experiments famous but also wrote fake news stories about them.

Joseph Gurney Cannon : The powerful and corrupt Speaker of the House opposed regulation and battled with Wiley over proposed pure-food legislation.

Russell Chittenden : As a Yale physiologist, he warned against some additives but on the Remsen Board, established after passage of the 1906 law, he was often a pro-industry defender of preservatives.

Norman J. Coleman : As commissioner of agriculture in Grover Clevelands first term, he was a Wiley ally who initiated investigations into food purity.

Peter Collier : Wileys predecessor as chief chemist clashed with the agriculture commissioner. Angry at being replaced, he orchestrated attacks on Wiley in an attempt to get his job back.

C. A. Crampton : A chemist on Wileys staff, he authored a report that found potentially dangerous doses of salicylic acid in alcoholic beverages.

Chauncey Depew : A reporters tale of corruption by this senator from New York, a wealthy former railroad lawyer and a friend of Theodore Roosevelt, caused the president to lash out at the muckraking press.

Grenville Dodge : A Civil War veteran and businessman, he headed the Dodge Commission investigation into allegations of adulterated army rations during the Spanish-American War.

Henry Irving Dodge : The writer worked with Willard Bigelow on The Truth About Food Adulteration, a high-profile series for Womans Home Companion magazine.

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