Harvey Wiley's Poison Squad: Food Additive Safety.

It took almost three decades to persuade Congress to pass, and the President to sign, the first federal food and drug statute, the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act.   A key accomplishment of the Progressive era in U.S. politics, this act defined adulteration and misbranding and applied them to all food and drug products moving in interstate commerce.   Beginning in the late 19th century, muckraking journalists began to condemn many of the excesses of the  so-called "patent drug" industry exposing their high alcohol and opium content; their deceptive marketing practices; and their stranglehold on the politics of the period.    It was only in 1902, however, when Congress appropriated a few thousand dollars to the Bureau of Chemistry to study the effects of commonly used food preservatives on human health, that the public began to take an interest in federal food regulation.  Wiley referred to his human subject research as the "Hygienic Table Studies."   The public, however, soon dubbed it the "Poison Squad" and the staid scientists in the Bureau of Chemistry were astonished at the publicity that their work received.   Admittedly, the idea of feeding young men increasing doses of untested ingredients to determine their effect on health did hold a sort of macabre fascination with the public, but the young men themselves played up the pathos by adopting the slogan "Only the Brave Dare Eat the Fare."   The Poison Squad studies were important for many reasons, but chief among them was the fact that they had a profound influence on early food safety policies under the 1906 statute.   This paper will explore the social and scientific context in which the Poison Squad studies were conducted and their enduring thematic influence on federal food safety testing and regulation.