Ergot (concluded)

As Congress ended its session last week (see p. 16), a Senate committee concluded its month-long investigation of the Food, Drug & Insecticide Administration of the Department of Agriculture. Director Walter Gilbert Campbell of the Administration had asked for the probing. His accusers were Henry Hurd Rusby, retired dean of Columbia University's Department of Pharmacy, and Howard W. Ambruster. Manhattan crude drug importer who has lost much money on Spanish ergot which large U. S. drug manufacturers would not buy from him because they believed that he had tried to victimize them with a Spanish ergot corner (TIME, June 26).

Fact: The U. S. Pharmacopoeia, law for the Food, Drug & Insecticide Administration, prescribes that one pound of crude ergot be used to make one pint of fluid extract of ergot which when injected into a white leghorn rooster will tint its comb bluish. Spanish ergot satisfies the formula. Russian ergot as imported into the U. S. docs not. Drug manufacturers have been cleaning Russian ergot of its contaminations and using two pounds of it to make a pint of extract. This Russian extract colors the cock's comb as does the Spanish.

Charges: Mr. Campbell's men have been lax in not enforcing the letter of the Pharmacopoeia, one pound ergot to one pint of extract; they have been lax in admitting to import filthy Russian ergot; the Russian extract contains obstetrically harmful adulterants; the Administration has, for improper reasons, been condoning the breaking of pure food laws by drug manufacturers.

Rebuttal: Administrator Campbell proved that he had legal discretion to admit to the U.S. substandard crude drugs which could be processed to make a pure, safe product. He released such drugs only to those manufacturers who had proved to his Administration that they sincerely wished to sell only such pure, safe drugs. His staff inspected manufacture as frequently as they could. Congress did not supply him with sufficient money to hire the vast staff he really required for fool-proof supervision of all foods, drugs and insecticides.* He was obliged to compromise for expediency, to trust the manufacturers' probity. The ergot extractors to whom he released substandard crude ergot were trustworthy. All the ergot extract which left the manufacturers was legally pure and obstetrically safe; but practically every extract of vegetable origin quickly deteriorates. Manufacturing druggists now date every bottle of their fluid extracts of ergot; retail druggists may not legally sell such extract after one year's possession; doctors knowingly would not use it.

Upshot: The Senatorial investigators disbanded quickly, Senator Burton Kendall Wheeler, most active inquisitor, sailing for Europe, without indicating whether or not they would make a report on this investigation of the Food, Drug & Insecticide Administration. If a report is made, the tenor of the final hearings last week indicated it will whitewash the U.S. administrators, as they have been whitewashed since the official days of the late Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley (see pg. 32), and it will recommend increased appropriation for Administration work. The Pharmacopoeia specifications for standard ergot extract may be changed. A committee has already started work on the eleventh decennial revision of the Pharmacopoeia.

As to the safety of available ergot extract, Senator-Dr. Royal S. Copeland, homeopath, rached this conclusion: "I have listened here for weeks. . . . I am forced to beleive that there is no foundation to the charge that the Agriculture Department or somebody else has brought about a standard that is a menace to the motherhood of America."

Epilog by Importer Ambruster: "I am interested only in finding out the fact, and I am going to do it if it strips me of every penny I own and if it takes ten years."

* Alluding to accusations which did not go before the investigating committee, such as those raised by Stuart Chase and F. J. Schlink in their Your Money's Worth and Dr. Wiley in his second last book The History of a Crime Against the Food Law. Specific charges: Fruits are dried by sulfur dioxide; maple sugar often contains 80% cane sugar: prunes often are glazed with glucose, a bacteria breeder: cider is often adulterated with benzoate of soda, as is catsup; jam may be made of low-grade fruit filled with gelatin and water; ice cream is sometimes made of starch and gelatin.

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