Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1930-06-15


Suddenly the telephone rang.
"Hello!" spoke one of the men as he grabbed
the phone.
'Helloi" came back the quick and bated re-
Spouse. Food and drug office? Yes can
you come down here quick? L. We've got
q poison outbreak one man dead
another dying SO people sick. -
The inspector got the town, the name OF the
person callng-the health ofhcer-and gave
him his word that he would be down immedi-
ately. And within an hour and a half he was
there in his car, so miles away.
The health officer hadn't exaggerated things
o bit. This the inspector found out when he
got down to the excited community. Poison
from some source had got into the food Of a
number of families in that town and had played
havoc. Individuals were sick all over and
any number were sick. Everybody was hoped
up" over the whole affair. There were vtis-
perings and depressed conversations on every
corner. A maniac" was loose in the community
trying to poison it. No. it was something that
had been eaten at the barbecue 1t was the
water" 1t was number of things.
THE Federal inspector, however did not be-
come excited. 1t time for one to
lose his head. True, there were a number of
people poisoned and the cases all bore the same
symptoms. This the Federal inspector found
out after questioning the health officer and the
sick and the medical doctors who had waited on
them. Two were dead.
Eventually the poisoning was traced down.
No maniac" had done it. Nor were any of the
theories projected by the populace and whis-
pered around the corners found tenable.
Strangely enough, the food found to be guilty
was sugar! But more of this anon.
The tracing of poisoning from foods involves
Q great deal of real detective ability" declares
George Larrick, inspector for the Food and Drug
Administration. The tracking down of a muir
iS
the tracking down of poisonous food. Given
poison case, the food inspector has little more
70 work on than the doctors diagnosis and his
tory Of the case. And a doctor can be led into
error as to diagnosis, as the sugar case will
prove. One doctor in this case laid the poison
ing to meat.
Just to get an idea of what is involved in
tracing down food poisoning let us take the
inspectors story of the sugar case.
The health officer in this case" said the IN
spector, was a skillful man, reliable and well
trained for his job He was conscientious and
wanted all the help he could get. So the first
thing did was TO get from him the names and
addresses of all the people who had suffered
from poisoning. then got the names of the
physicians treating the cases
MY assistants and went to the physicians
first. DR. A thought that spoiled meat was TO
blame. DR.. B figured that some huckster had
unknowingly sold some cabbage with poison
spray on 1t. DR.. chung TO the idea of a
maniac
These doctors we're glad to tell us all they
knew about the cases. They informed us of
the time they were called in, the condition of
the patients at the first call and the response
d them to treatments given.
AFTER we had consulted with the doctors and
had obtained from them all the information
possible, we then visited the patients. This
was a big job as there were about SO Of them
Our questioning of them followed the line Of
how they felt, when they began to feel sick,