The Poison Squad

by Deborah Blum

  The government’s third point—and this would become the primary focus of the trial—was that the drink did, however, contain another potent stimulant, namely caffeine. This charge immediately caught the attention of a dedicated nation of coffee drinkers as well as soft-drink imbibers. The Coca-Cola trial was going to put caffeine—and early-twentieth-century scientific understanding of its effects—at center stage. Not surprisingly, reporters flocked to Chattanooga for the show.

  Newspaper coverage was constant and varied widely according to the editors’ perspectives. EIGHT COCA-COLAS CONTAIN ENOUGH CAFFEINE TO KILL, the Atlanta Georgian announced based on testimony in the trial’s first week, continuing its ongoing crusade against Asa Candler and his company. COCA-COLA DRINKERS SAY IT IS NOT BAD, the Chattanooga News countered. Wiley hadn’t wanted the trial to be held in that southern city, where a large Coca-Cola bottling plant was one of the city’s main employers. He had urged McCabe to get a change of venue to Washington, DC. But McCabe refused, fueling conspiracy theories among Wiley’s allies that the solicitor—and the agriculture secretary—wanted the case to fail as a means of further crippling the influence of the chief chemist.

  McCabe began the prosecution by calling J. L. Lynch, an Agriculture Department food and drug inspector. Lynch promptly provided a detailed and alarming portrait of Coca-Cola production methods. Describing the way the syrup soft-drink base was made, he said: “The Negro cook engaged in dumping the ingredients in the kettle was scantily attired in a dirty undershirt, old dirty trousers and broken shoes. His bare feet were protruding from his shoes in places and he was perspiring freely. He was chewing tobacco and spitting from time to time, the expectorate falling on the floor and on the platform from which he was dumping the sugar.” Excess sugar also fell onto the platform, and the cook would shove it into the kettle with either a board or his feet, Lynch said. The caramel coloring was added on another floor of the building, he continued, and that level was so slimy with tobacco spit and other substances—“it had apparently never been scrubbed”—that the inspector declared that he’d been afraid of slipping and falling.

  After Lynch came two scientists—H. C. Fuller, a pharmaceutical industry chemist, and W. O. Emory of the Bureau of Chemistry—who had independently analyzed the syrup. Both verified it no longer contained either coca leaf or kola nut extracts—although pictures of the plant leaves still decorated Coca-Cola barrels. Both verified that the primary stimulant now found in the drink was caffeine. They also noted some other unexpected ingredients—such as dirt, straw, and insect parts.

  The government’s main expert on caffeine was Henry Hurd Rusby, professor of botany and materia medica at Columbia University’s College of Pharmacy and a longtime editor for U.S. Pharmacopeia, the publication that set uniform standards for pharmaceutical compounds. Rusby—fifty-six, slight, fair haired, brisk of manner—was a former physician who had developed a passionate interest in medicinal botany. Among other research projects, he’d spent more than a year in South America researching the plant sources of cocaine and caffeine. He was relieved to find the former missing from Coca-Cola but testified that caffeine was “apt to be deleterious to human health.”

  Given the quantity of caffeine in the soft drink, as described by Fuller and Emory, Rusby testified, if the “product known as Coca-Cola were taken into the system in repeated doses it would be injurious.” Some twenty other government witnesses supporting Rusby’s claim were also part of McCabe’s expert list, a roster that showed he intended to win, despite rumors to the contrary. Expert after expert spoke of the risks involved in continually consuming the alkaloid, some telling the jurors about animal studies with alarming outcomes.

  USDA chemist F. P. Morgan had found that a regular dose of Coca-Cola appeared to cause inflammation and lesions in the stomachs of rabbits. Boston-based toxicologist William Boos of Massachusetts General Hospital had looked at caffeine’s effect on frogs, finding that it interfered with heart rate and affected the nervous system and caused “reflex irritability.” The jurors also heard about unsettling effects on humans. “I consider caffeine a habit-forming drug,” said Dr. John Musser of the University of Pennsylvania. His patients who drank caffeinated beverages rarely consumed a single glass or cup: “Once taken, there is a desire or craving of the system to repeat the dose.” Dr. Oliver Osborne of Yale Medical School testified that several glasses of Coca-Cola a day registered above the recommended dose for caffeine set by U.S. Pharmacopeia. Dr. Maurice Tyrode of Harvard University testified that eight glasses of Coca-Cola contained so much caffeine that their rapid consumption was potentially fatal.

  The court also heard from “Coca-Cola addicts.” A patient from Philadelphia reported that he had found the soft drink a helpful stimulant—at first. “When I felt tired or fagged a glass or two of Coca-Cola would revive me. As the habit increased, I consumed about a dozen drinks a day.” He sought treatment after developing insomnia and a state of constant jitters: “After I quit using Coca-Cola my general health improved and has continued to improve.”

  Lyman Kebler represented the Bureau of Chemistry position. “I have traveled extensively in the United States and have observed that Coca-Cola is sold indiscriminately to all comers at soda fountains, without distinction as to youth or old age, nervous or robust persons. I have seen children as young as four years old drinking Coca-Cola at fountains,” Kebler said. Both as a scientist and a family man, he found this irresponsible and dangerous. He’d accompanied Fuller on the tour of the Coca-Cola plant, where he’d also been appalled by the filthy conditions; he’d been particularly struck by the spiderwebs’ dangling over the vats and the workers dripping sweat all over the floors and spitting tobacco juice everywhere: “I saw no cuspidors.” But Kebler had also noticed the two-hundred-pound containers of caffeine, in crystalline form, sitting alongside the cooking vats.

  Like everything else in the plant, Kebler testified, the caffeine had appeared somewhat grimy. It was “not as white as the ordinary article.” There was a reason, Kebler continued, that Coca-Cola had two popular nicknames. One was “dope” and the other was “Coke,” and both referred, he said, to its well-known stimulant effects. That had been true when it contained cocaine and it was true now. “Caffeine is a drug having poisonous tendency,” Kebler said.

  Coca-Cola was angrily prepared to counter these accusations. Its defense began with testimony from two members of the company’s founding family. First, John S. Candler, who had partnered with his brother, Asa, and other investors in forming the soft-drink company in 1892, declared that he consumed at least one glass of Coca-Cola a day—and sometimes six or more—but did not consider that evidence of addiction. He just liked it. “I have never experienced any inordinate craving for it or observed any tendency to form a habit.” In other words, he stated, “My health is good.”

  Asa Candler’s oldest son, Charles Howard Candler, who was vice president and general manager of the company, directly contradicted the government’s accusations of cheapjack production standards. “About eight men, three white and five colored, are employed in making the Coca-Cola syrup,” he said. “The sugar is dumped into the kettle by a Negro who has been employed since 1906. He does not chew tobacco.” And that cook wore good protective gear while working on a well-cleaned factory platform, Candler added. The company called the cook, James Gaston. He said that he wore coveralls and heavy shoes while working in the factory—and for good reason. It would be dangerous to wear shoes with holes in them, he said, because “the stuff splashes out of the kettle and would scald my feet.”

  Candler suggested that the government was untrustworthy. Certainly he doubted the veracity of its finding of dirt and insect parts in the soft-drink syrup. And he dismissed Kebler’s reference to the beverage’s drug-linked nicknames as unfair. The street terms were unauthorized and unwanted by the makers of Coca-Cola. “The company has never advertised or sold Coca-Cola under the names ‘Dope’ or ‘Coke.’” (T
his was true at the time; the company wouldn’t trademark the name “Coke” until 1945.) Further, the company disputed the idea that it was selling just another version of a stimulant—or a toxic substance—because its formula happened to include caffeine.

  It also offered a lineup of expert witnesses. Rudolph Witthaus, a New York toxicologist known for his testimony in high-profile murder trials, promised, “I know of no case of caffeine in any quantity causing death.” John Marshall, of the University of Pennsylvania, one of the founders of American toxicological analysis, said that he’d tested caffeine’s effect on protein metabolism and found no measurable impact. Charles F. Chandler of Columbia University, an industry-allied sixty-five-year-old chemist who had testified for the meatpackers in the oleomargarine hearings before the U.S. Senate in the 1880s, declared, “I am familiar with caffeine. It is not a toxic or poisonous substance.”

  Victor Vaughan, a chemist from the University of Michigan, who had earlier disputed Wiley’s contention that sodium benzoate might pose a health risk, also came forward as a soft-drink company witness. In his testimony Vaughan said he’d based his analysis on the possibility of imbibing an ounce of Coca-Cola syrup, mixed with a cup of carbonated water, six or seven times a day. “I have no doubt it would be stimulating to the brain and muscles, and to some extent, possibly the kidneys, slightly, but such stimulation would be normal.” Vaughan had fed guinea pigs Coca-Cola for almost four months and, he said, seen no ill effects worth mentioning.

  Coca-Cola had also hired Columbia University psychologist Harry L. Hollingworth to run tests on caffeine’s effect on human mental processes and physical reactions. Later hailed as doing the most impressive research presented during the trial, Hollingworth’s study involved sixteen subjects, ten men and six women, between the ages of nineteen and thirty-nine. All had swallowed capsules daily during a four-week period. The capsules contained either no caffeine or caffeine in a range of different doses.

  It was a classic double-blind study; neither the participants nor Hollingworth knew who received what capsule. At regular intervals, every subject was tested to evaluate motor skills and cognitive function. Each was also required to keep a journal recording sleep patterns and noting periods of either alertness or fatigue. By the end of the study, Hollingworth had accumulated 64,000 data points that he presented to the slightly stunned jury through a series of complex charts.

  The psychologist found that caffeine did speed up motor reactions briefly. Its influence on cognitive processes was more gradual and more persistent. He described caffeine as a mild stimulant that, overall, seemed to enhance general performance across the spectrum of given tasks, without measurable harm that he could identify. The journalists covering the trial, many of them regular coffee drinkers, reported these results in great detail.

  John F. Queeny, founder of the Monsanto Chemical Company in St. Louis, followed Hollingworth. The company was, as it was proud to say, the maker of both saccharin and the crystalline caffeine used by the soft-drink company. Queeny testified that Coca-Cola’s caffeine contents remained modest compared with other beverages such as coffee and tea. His company’s chemical analyses suggested that a strong cup of tea, for instance, could contain almost three times the caffeine in a glass of Coca-Cola.

  The company then focused on consumers. A group of Atlanta doctors testified that none of the children they treated ever drank Coca-Cola—a counter to Kebler’s assertions. Witnesses also included ten carefully selected adult Atlanta residents—ranging in age from twenty-four to fifty-seven. These upright citizens, Coca-Cola’s attorneys said, had been consuming their product for an average of seven years, some drinking fifteen or more glasses a day. None of them had reported ill effects. The physicians hired by Coca-Cola were also confident that the adults who did imbibe Coca-Cola handled it without side effects. One doctor told of a traveling salesman who regularly knocked back nearly two dozen drinks a day. Or as the Chattanooga Daily Times put it—to the undoubted annoyance of the Candler family—the salesman had consumed “20 dopes daily” but remained in “perfect health.”

  Before McCabe could assemble his rebuttal witnesses, Coca-Cola’s lawyers made a surprise appeal to Judge Edward T. Sanford to dismiss the case. They did not argue that Coca-Cola had proved that caffeine was harmless or that heavy soft-drink consumption was without risk; clearly that remained a matter of scientific debate. Rather the company now made an entirely new argument: The scientific debate was irrelevant because the company had made a new reading of the law. Coca-Cola now argued that caffeine was not an “added ingredient” but a basic part of the soft-drink formula. The law addressed additives and adulterants. If caffeine was not an additive, as Coca-Cola now argued, then the Agriculture Department had no standing to prosecute.

  It was something of a legal gamble at this stage of a three-week trial. But to the surprise—not to say shock—of those on both sides, Judge Sanford readily accepted the company’s position. He agreed that the inclusion of caffeine in a soft-drink formula—regardless of whether the compound posed a health risk—was legally different from, say, adding formaldehyde to milk or copper sulfate to canned peas. On Friday, April 7, the day after Coca-Cola presented the new argument, Sanford dismissed the jury and closed the case: “I am constrained to conclude that the use of the word ‘added,’ when applied to poisonous and deleterious ingredients . . . cannot be considered meaningless.”

  COCA COLA IS THE WINNER, announced the Chattanooga Daily Times headline, adding with some partisan pleasure, “Case is practically thrown out of court.” The paper speculated that the judge had taken sides, to protect not only the soft-drink company but also American business in general. The Daily Times claimed to have discovered that “if the government proved successful in the Coca-Cola case, it was the first of 2,500 prosecutions planned.” That number was a journalistic exaggeration, but it was true that the Agriculture Department had hoped for a clear legal precedent that would support better enforcement of the law and smooth the way for other cases.

  For once, George McCabe and Harvey Wiley were united in dismay; on the same day that Sanford announced his decision, McCabe announced the government’s decision to appeal the Coca-Cola verdict.

  The defeated delegation from the Agriculture Department had barely returned from Chattanooga to their jobs in Washington when the increasingly contentious saccharin question reemerged—and this time in ways that did not please Monsanto and its allies. A just-completed report by the Remsen Board, based on a review initiated at industry request, had found that the sweetener did indeed present a potential health risk if consumed in large enough doses.

  And those large doses were made the more likely because of the common practice among food processors of substituting cheaper saccharin for more expensive sugar without informing the consumer, leading to a cumulative exposure. This was what Wiley had been warning about since before his unfortunate confrontation with the previous president. It underscored not just the chief chemist’s belief that saccharin could damage health but also his near obsession with truth in labeling. The finding, from the supposedly industry-friendly Remsen Board, headed by saccharin codiscoverer Ira Remsen himself, was a shocker to McCabe and Wilson—and one that infuriated Monsanto’s head, John Queeny.

  It had come about in part because Remsen had prudently recused himself from the investigation. The lead investigator had been board member Christian Herter, a physician on the faculty of Columbia University and cofounder of the Journal of Biological Chemistry. In December 1910 Herter had unexpectedly died, at age forty-five, of what his doctors called a neurological wasting disease. His friend and colleague Otto Folin, a professor of biological chemistry and molecular pharmacology at Harvard University, had then completed the research.

  Swedish-born Folin had used a Poison Squad–style method of adding capsules containing saccharin to the meals of healthy male volunteers. A tally of the results after four weeks found that tiny amounts of
saccharin (less than 0.3 grams) taken daily did not produce any signs of obvious injury. In trace amounts, Folin reported, it appeared to be safe.

  But in subjects given higher doses, both Herter in the early stages of the study and Folin in his follow-up work had recorded signs of digestive upset, ranging from nausea to stomach pain. Further, such higher doses were a real possibility for average American consumers, the report reminded the authorities, given that unlabeled saccharin was now found in products including canned fruits and vegetables, jams, jellies, wines, and other spirits. The Remsen Board also, again to industry dismay, concurred with Wiley that saccharin lacked any of the nutritive (caloric) value of natural sugar and therefore lessened the quality of food.

  McCabe had long believed, along with Theodore Roosevelt and Secretary Wilson, that saccharin was relatively harmless, too benign to merit Agriculture Department regulation. That belief had become a de facto federal policy, reflected in the way that the U.S. War Department now included saccharin tablets in its military rations. But department policy was also to consider the Remsen Board findings the final word. In late April, just three weeks after the Coca-Cola trial ended, the Agriculture Department announced that starting in July 1911, all foods containing saccharin would be considered adulterated and therefore subject to prosecution.

  Queeny, energized by the Coca-Cola trial, hurried to Washington to mount an immediate counterattack. He summoned Monsanto’s new attorney, Warwick Hough, the same Hough who had so ably represented the liquor wholesalers on the whiskey question. Together they gathered a cadre of chemical and food industry representatives, secured a meeting with Wilson, and asked the secretary to rethink the decision. First they contended that the government had moved too fast. They recognized that Wilson was a supporter of the Remsen Board. But the manufacturers, Hough now said, had a right to read and respond to the Remsen report before a rule was issued. Second he asserted that if the rule was to be issued, it should be amended to allow industry time to adapt, particularly time to gradually sell and reduce existing saccharin inventories.