Harvey Washington Wiley – An Indiana Hero
March 18, 2019 at 4:15 p.m.
By Max [email protected]
But not just in Indiana — his federal governmental and private services in the early 1900s were instrumental in keeping our food supply pure, safe and free from toxic additives and other contamination.
Prior to his research and activism, anything manufactured by U.S. companies was suspect, and many European countries threatened or refused to import food grown or packaged here. There were any number of dishonest food brokers — we were becoming as infamous as those in England where pickles were made green by copper; vinegar rendered sharp with sulfurous acid; cream composed of rice powder or arrowroot in milk; jams mixed of sugar, starch and clay, and colored with preparations of copper or lead; and catsup formed of the dregs of distilled vinegar with a decoction of the outer green husk of walnuts, and seasoned with allspice.
Fury over the danger posed by adulterated foods resulted in the passage in 1860 of Britain’s Act for Preventing Adulteration in Food and Drink. Business interests managed to limit the fine for poisoning food to a mere 5 pounds, but at least it was a precedent. There was no such law in the United States. In addition to the similar problems here, honey was rampantly adulterated with corn syrup, and milk was being preserved by the presence of formaldehyde. (Formaldehyde is usually used to stop dead bodies from rotting.) Coffee might be largely sawdust, or wheat, beans, beets, peas and dandelion seeds scorched black and ground to resemble the genuine article. Flour routinely contained crushed stone or gypsum as a cheap extender. There were other incidents as well, and many products were deliberately mislabeled.
The United States was well behind the rest of Europe in terms of legislation. Many reporters, congressmen and crusading private citizens clamored for a new law, no one more adamant and persistent than Harvey Wiley.
Wiley's early history and career were documented by Deborah Blum in her fascinating new book, “The Poison Squad.” He was the sixth of seven children, born on April 16, 1844, in a log cabin on a small farm in Kent, Indiana, about 100 miles northeast of the farm where Abraham Lincoln had grown up a few decades earlier.
Harvey Wiley was preparing for college when the Civil War broke out, and his parents, despite their antislavery stance, were determined that he continue. He enrolled at nearby Hanover College in 1863 but a year later decided he could no longer sit out the war. After joining the 137th Indiana Infantry, he was deployed to Tennessee and Alabama, where he guarded Union-held railroad lines and spent his spare hours studying anatomy, reciting daily from a textbook to a fellow soldier.
After discharge he accepted an offer to teach chemistry in the Indianapolis public high schools and there began to appreciate the insights offered by that branch of science or, as he came to see it, the “nobility and magnitude” of chemistry. Realizing he had a passion for the rapidly advancing field, he went back to school yet again, this time to study chemistry at Harvard University, which — as was typical at the time — awarded him a Bachelor Of Science degree after only a few months of study. In 1874 he accepted a position at Indiana’s newly opened Purdue University as its first (and only) chemistry professor.
Wiley developed a reputation as the state’s go-to scientist for analyzing virtually anything—from water quality to rocks to soil samples — and especially foodstuffs. This was accelerated by a working sabbatical in 1878 in the newly united German Empire, considered the global leader in chemical research. He studied at one of the empire’s pioneering food-quality laboratories and attended lectures by world-renowned scientist August Wilhelm von Hofmann, who had been the first director of the Royal College of Chemistry.
Unlike Great Britain, the U.S. did not have anything resembling a Food and Drug Administration. The closest department for analyzing food and drink resided at the Department of Agriculture, established by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. The department had little to do with enforcement until the director named Wiley as chief chemist in 1883, recruiting him from Purdue University. He spent the next 25 years fighting for pure food, drink and properly labeled drugs.
His work laid the foundation for the first federal law, etitled the Pure Food and Drug Law of 1906. Newspapers referred to the Act as "Dr. Wiley's Law." It was designed to prevent the manufacture, sale or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines and liquors, and for regulating their traffic. Unfortunately, President Theodore Roosevelt did not give Dr. Wiley the credit he deserved and refused to acknowledge his heroic efforts.
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. He can be reached by email at maxsherman339@ gmail.com.
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But not just in Indiana — his federal governmental and private services in the early 1900s were instrumental in keeping our food supply pure, safe and free from toxic additives and other contamination.
Prior to his research and activism, anything manufactured by U.S. companies was suspect, and many European countries threatened or refused to import food grown or packaged here. There were any number of dishonest food brokers — we were becoming as infamous as those in England where pickles were made green by copper; vinegar rendered sharp with sulfurous acid; cream composed of rice powder or arrowroot in milk; jams mixed of sugar, starch and clay, and colored with preparations of copper or lead; and catsup formed of the dregs of distilled vinegar with a decoction of the outer green husk of walnuts, and seasoned with allspice.
Fury over the danger posed by adulterated foods resulted in the passage in 1860 of Britain’s Act for Preventing Adulteration in Food and Drink. Business interests managed to limit the fine for poisoning food to a mere 5 pounds, but at least it was a precedent. There was no such law in the United States. In addition to the similar problems here, honey was rampantly adulterated with corn syrup, and milk was being preserved by the presence of formaldehyde. (Formaldehyde is usually used to stop dead bodies from rotting.) Coffee might be largely sawdust, or wheat, beans, beets, peas and dandelion seeds scorched black and ground to resemble the genuine article. Flour routinely contained crushed stone or gypsum as a cheap extender. There were other incidents as well, and many products were deliberately mislabeled.
The United States was well behind the rest of Europe in terms of legislation. Many reporters, congressmen and crusading private citizens clamored for a new law, no one more adamant and persistent than Harvey Wiley.
Wiley's early history and career were documented by Deborah Blum in her fascinating new book, “The Poison Squad.” He was the sixth of seven children, born on April 16, 1844, in a log cabin on a small farm in Kent, Indiana, about 100 miles northeast of the farm where Abraham Lincoln had grown up a few decades earlier.
Harvey Wiley was preparing for college when the Civil War broke out, and his parents, despite their antislavery stance, were determined that he continue. He enrolled at nearby Hanover College in 1863 but a year later decided he could no longer sit out the war. After joining the 137th Indiana Infantry, he was deployed to Tennessee and Alabama, where he guarded Union-held railroad lines and spent his spare hours studying anatomy, reciting daily from a textbook to a fellow soldier.
After discharge he accepted an offer to teach chemistry in the Indianapolis public high schools and there began to appreciate the insights offered by that branch of science or, as he came to see it, the “nobility and magnitude” of chemistry. Realizing he had a passion for the rapidly advancing field, he went back to school yet again, this time to study chemistry at Harvard University, which — as was typical at the time — awarded him a Bachelor Of Science degree after only a few months of study. In 1874 he accepted a position at Indiana’s newly opened Purdue University as its first (and only) chemistry professor.
Wiley developed a reputation as the state’s go-to scientist for analyzing virtually anything—from water quality to rocks to soil samples — and especially foodstuffs. This was accelerated by a working sabbatical in 1878 in the newly united German Empire, considered the global leader in chemical research. He studied at one of the empire’s pioneering food-quality laboratories and attended lectures by world-renowned scientist August Wilhelm von Hofmann, who had been the first director of the Royal College of Chemistry.
Unlike Great Britain, the U.S. did not have anything resembling a Food and Drug Administration. The closest department for analyzing food and drink resided at the Department of Agriculture, established by President Abraham Lincoln in 1862. The department had little to do with enforcement until the director named Wiley as chief chemist in 1883, recruiting him from Purdue University. He spent the next 25 years fighting for pure food, drink and properly labeled drugs.
His work laid the foundation for the first federal law, etitled the Pure Food and Drug Law of 1906. Newspapers referred to the Act as "Dr. Wiley's Law." It was designed to prevent the manufacture, sale or transportation of adulterated or misbranded or poisonous or deleterious foods, drugs, medicines and liquors, and for regulating their traffic. Unfortunately, President Theodore Roosevelt did not give Dr. Wiley the credit he deserved and refused to acknowledge his heroic efforts.
Max Sherman is a medical writer and pharmacist retired from the medical device industry. He can be reached by email at maxsherman339@ gmail.com.
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