Food & Death

At San Francisco's Opera House one evening last week City Health Director Jacob Casson Geiger was summoned to a telephone, informed that one Albert Perry, 87, had just died of arsenic poisoning. That night Albert Perry's daughter Bessie, 53, also died. Next morning authorities found arsenic and sodium fluoride in the family's baking soda, traced the soda to a cut-rate department store run by one Joseph Rosenthal. Twenty-one other soda-users were discovered ill. Taking to the radio, Director Geiger warned San Franciscans to eat no more of the Rosenthal soda.

Investigation disclosed that Merchant Rosenthal had bought his soda by the barrel from one Nick Manno, who had salvaged it from broken Arm & Hammer brand packages. In two weeks bargain-hunting housewives had snapped up 800 lb. Examination showed no traces of poison in other broken Arm & Hammer packages, thus indicating that Rosenthal's soda had been contaminated during or since salvage. A chemist reported that it could hardly have been an accident, because the poisons and soda were too thoroughly mixed.

Director Geiger thrilled the city by suggesting a mass murder plot. Likeliest suspect was a Chicago chef who in 1912, at a banquet for Cardinal Mundelein, put arsenic in the soup of 1,000 guests, killed several, sickened hundreds. Indicted for murder, the chef escaped, has since been accused of two other mass poisonings by arsenic. A New York chemist made San Francisco's mystery more exciting by reporting that he had found similar mixtures of arsenic and fluoride in baking soda two years ago. Director Geiger set out to investigate the cases of 30 San Franciscans who had died of acute gastritis or kidney ailments within the fortnight. The puzzle was only partly solved when a barrel of pure sodium fluoride was found among the soda barrels in Rosenthal's store. As excitement reached fever pitch, the city toxicologist announced that Albert Perry and daughter had died of natural causes after all and a restaurant dishwasher swallowed a spoonful of soda which had not come from Rosenthal's, died in convulsions.

Other food-poisoning news of the week:

P: In Indianapolis' county jail 80 prisoners grew nauseated after their noon meal. Sheriff Otto Ray thought that someone, perhaps hoping for a jailbreak, had poured disinfectant into the gravy.

P: In Spain's Murcia Province 6,000 citizens ate bread made from flour containing powdered lead, whereupon 6,000 stomachs churned, 12,000 legs grew numb. The flour distributor, one Jose Merono Olmos, was held in $35,000 bail, tentatively assessed $70,000 damages.

P: In Natchez, Miss, three members of Herbert Reed's family were hospitalized and two suffered at home after a two-month diet of lead arsenate. Bought for flower spray and left on a kitchen shelf, the poison had been tracked into the family's food and dishes by roaches and bugs.

P: In Bello Horizonte, Brazil, after baking a cake for what she thought was her 115th birthday, Euflasina Maria died. Next day five of her children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren ate the cake, followed Euflasina Maria.

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