Harvey W. Wiley

Dale A. Stirling

INTERTOX, 2819 Elliott Avenue, Seattle, Washington 98121

Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, an early pioneer of food chemistry, food toxicology, and food safety, was born near Kent, Indiana in 1844. He received an undergraduate degree in 1867 from Hanover College and an M.D. from Indiana Medical College in 1871. Shortly thereafter, Wiley accepted a position teaching chemistry at Indiana Medical College. He obtained a B.S. from Harvard in 1873 and then, in 1874, accepted a faculty position in chemistry at Purdue University. In 1878, Wiley worked in Germany at the Imperial Food Laboratory in Bismarck and was even elected to the prestigious German Chemical Society. He became proficient at operating the "polariscope" and studying sugar chemistry. With that knowledge he spent his last years at Purdue studying sorghum culture and sugar chemistry, focusing on the adulteration of sugar with glucose, which was also the subject of his first published paper in 1881. Wiley's educational and early professional experiences set the table for his subsequent pioneering efforts in adulterated food products.

In 1883, Wiley was appointed Chief of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Chemical Division. The division changed its name to the Bureau of Chemistry in 1898, and that is where Wiley conducted his most famous work. He authored early important studies on food adulteration (Bulletin 13, Foods and Food Adulterants, published in 1887, and republished in 1890 as Bulletin 25, A Popular Treatise on the Extent and Character of Food Adulterations). More significantly, between 1902 and 1907 Wiley directed what would become known as the Poison Squad. Employees of the Bureau of Chemistry and medical students from Georgetown Medical College received free board, eating meals prepared in the bureau's kitchen, during the preparation of which, specific quantities of commonly used chemical preservatives were added to the ingredients. Low paid recent graduates eagerly signed up to join the so-called Poison Squad. In essence, the subjects were undergoing medical monitoring—they were required to record their weight, temperature, and pulse rate before each meal and to list what they ate. Thereafter, urine and feces samples were collected. The end result was to determine to what level chemicals were retained, excreted, or changed in their bodies and if any symptoms noted could be attributed to those chemicals. Chemicals used in these experiments included borax, boric acid, copper sulfate, potassium nitrate, saccharin, salicylic acid and salicylates, sulfuric acid and sulfites, benzoic acid and benzoates, and formaldehyde. Wiley was a tireless promoter of food safety. He even used the gentle art of poetry (Goyan, 1981) to support his causes. One poem touched on the odorous vapors of gasoline:

The odors that rise with the morning sun
    From the roses so rarely seen
Are sweet, but of joys there is only one
    'Tis the scent of gasoline.

Another poem dealt with the questionable contents of food:

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 dread of delight.
    And yet while we eat
    We cannot help asking "What's in it?
    Oh, maybe this bread contains alum and 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 haven't a good place to pin it
    Annato's so yellow and beef fat so sleek,
    Oh, I wish I could know what is in it?"

Dr. Wiley's promotion of food safety resulted in passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act in 1906. Earlier attempts at such legislation had failed, and this landmark law was the first to regulate the development and production of safe foods and drugs. Both Wiley's administration of the law and concerns over preserving chemicals that had not been specifically addressed in the law caused some controversy. Nevertheless, under Wiley's leadership, the Bureau of Chemistry grew in size and stature after assuming responsibility for enforcement of the 1906 Act (FDA 2001). Wiley was a prolific writer during his tenure with the Bureau of Chemistry. The Government Printing Office published four of his major studies, including Influence of Food Preservatives and Artificial Colors on Digestion and Health v. Formaldehyde in 1908. Wiley also wrote several books during this time period, including Chemistry and Longevity: Food in its Relation to Individual and National Development (1900, The Hundred Years Club, New York).

Dr. Wiley retired from the Bureau of Chemistry in 1912 and became director of the Bureau of Foods Sanitation and Health for Good Housekeeping magazine. While working for the magazine, Wiley developed the well-known Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval, which is still in use today.

Another significant contribution of Dr. Wiley`s was his role in the founding of the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists in 1884. The association developed, tested, standardized, and validated methods of analysis required for enforcing laws related to agricultural commodities. He served as its president in 1886 and was secretary from 1889 to 1912. In addition, Wiley served as chairman of the association's Pure-Food Legislation Committee. In 1965, the association name was changed from the Association of Official Agricultural Chemists to its present name, the Association of Official Analytical Chemists, International in 1991 (Iowa State University, 1999). Wiley continued to write books after leaving the Bureau, including Not by Bread Alone: The Principles of Human Nutrition (1915, Hearst's International Library, New York) and Beverages and their Adulteration: Origin, Composition, Manufacture, Natural, Artificial, Fermented, Distilled, Alkaloidal and Fruit Juices, 1919 (Blakiston's Sons, Philadelphia). In 1929, Wiley revisited his earlier glories and controversies in his self-published book, The History of a Crime Against the Food Law: The Amazing Story of the National Food and Drug Law Intended to Protect the Health of the People, Perverted to Protect Adulteration of Foods and Drugs. According to Wiley, his book

portrays, in a vivid way, the fate that overtook the law I labored so long to perfect. Instead of the food law having been enforced according to the way Congress intended, it met an almost complete debacle and was practically rewritten by presidents and cabinets. It was not a difficult law to understand, but it was an easy one to overthrow. It is amazing how rapidly members of Congress who helped draft the law failed to realize how affairs went on in its enforcement, which were entirely foreign to its verbiage and its purpose. The result is easily foretold. Boards and authorities were constituted by executive action, which had no place whatever in the mechanism finally adopted. The methods of control of the law and its purpose have both entirely changed, and the law may easily become a protection for misbranding and adulteration and a cloak for the misbranders and adulterators.

That book was followed in 1930 by Harvey W. Wiley: An Autobiography (Bobbs-Merrill). In it Wiley reveals progressive leanings regarding women's rights in a touching acknowledgement to his wife, and provides a detailed personal history from his early years in Indiana, his Civil War experience, and his educational and professional pursuits.

Wiley died on June 30, 1930 at the age of 86 and was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. His legacy is still in evidence today in the work of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and in the activities of many food and drug toxicologists. Perhaps the greatest recognition of his work was the issuance in 1956 of a postal stamp bearing his likeness, which celebrated the 50th anniversary of the Pure Food and Drug Law that he championed.

NOTES

1 For correspondence via fax: (206) 443-2117. E-mail: dastirling{at}intertox.com. Back

SUGGESTED READING

Day, H. G. (1976). Food safety—then and now. A Bicentennial study. J. Am. Diet. Assoc. 69, 229–234.[Medline]

U.S. FDA (2001). FDA History: FDA Commissioners and their Predecessors. Food and Drug Administration. Accessible online at http://www.fda.gov.

Goyan, J. E. (1981). Dr. Harvey Wiley's brainchild, 75 years later. J. Assoc. Off. Anal. Chem. 64, 256–259.[Medline]

Iowa State University. (1999). Records Inventory (MS-477) of the Association of Official Analytical Chemists International, 1891–ongoing. Accessible online at http://www.lib.iastate.edu.

Janssen, W. F. (1981). The squad that ate poison. FDA Consumer, December 1981–January 1982, 6–11.

Linton, F. B. (1949). Federal food and drug laws—leaders who achieved their enactment and enforcement. Food Drug Cosm. L. Qrtly. 451, 9–20.

Todhunter, E. N. (1966). Biographical notes from the history of nutrition: Harvey Washington Wiley—October 18, 1844–June 30, 1930. J. Am. Diet. Assoc. 49, 121.[Medline]

Wiley, H. W. (1929). The History of a Crime Against the Food Law: The Amazing Story of the National Food and Drug Law Intended to Protect the Health of the People, Perverted to Protect Adulteration of Foods and Drugs. Self-published, Washington, DC.

Wiley, H. W. (1930). Harvey W. Wiley: An Autobiography. Bobbs-Merrill, Indianapolis, IN.





This Article
Extract
FREE Full Text (PDF)
Alert me when this article is cited
Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Email this article to a friend
Similar articles in this journal
Similar articles in ISI Web of Science
Similar articles in PubMed
Alert me to new issues of the journal
Add to My Personal Archive
Download to citation manager
Disclaimer
Request Permissions
Google Scholar
Articles by Stirling, D. A.
PubMed
PubMed Citation
Articles by Stirling, D. A.