From Esquire:
While the kitchen in the basement of the Agriculture Department's offices in Washington DC was unorthodox, it was hard to fault the food. The menu was wide and varied, and the chef, known only as "Perry," had an impressive resume, including a stint as the "head chef for the Queen of Bavaria." The chicken was fresh, the potatoes perfectly prepared, the asparagus toothsome yet not tough. Everything was of the highest quality.
Including the poison.
At first, it was borax, a bright white mineral, finely ground, and shipped in fresh from the burnings wastes of Death Valley, CA, where it was mined. Perry hid it in the butter, until he noticed that the twelve workers who took their meals at his table were avoiding the spread. Next, he mixed it in with their milk, but they stopped drinking the milk, too, complaining that it tasted "metallic." Finally, Perry gave up, and began packing the borax into capsules. Between courses, the diners would dutifully wash them down.
In 1902, when the group that ate at Perry's table first convened, it didn't have a name. Its leader, the Agriculture Department's Chief Chemist, Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, referred to the project as the "hygienic table trials," but it wasn't long before Washington Post reporter George Rothwell Brown came up with a better name: The Poison Squad.
The goal of the Poison Squad was simple: they were tasked with trying some of the most commonly used food additives in order to determine their effects. During each of the poison squads trials, the members would eat steadily increasing amounts of each additive, carefully tracking the impact that it had on their bodies. They would stop when the members started to get sick.
THE RIGHT STUFF
The human lab rats were "twelve young clerks, vigorous and voracious." All were graduates of the civil service exam, all were screened for "high moral character," and all had reputations for "sobriety and reliability." One was a former Yale sprinter, another a captain in the local high school's cadet regiment, and a third a scientist in his own right. All twelve took oaths, pledging one year of service, promising to only eat food that was prepared in the Poison Squad's kitchen, and waiving their right to sue the government for damages -- including death -- that might result from their participation in the program.
Squad members needed a lot of patience. Before each meal, they had to weigh themselves, take their temperatures and check their pulse rates. Their stools, urine, hair and sweat were collected, and they had to submit to weekly physicals. When one member got a haircut without permission, he was allegedly sent back to the barber with orders to collect his shorn locks. Most of the squad members didn't get extra pay for their hazardous duty: in return for their patience and obedience, they received three square meals a day -- all of which were carefully poisoned.
There was one more rule: although many of the most prominent food crusaders were women, squad members had to be men. An outspoken misogynist, Dr. Wiley was prone to referring to women as "savages," claiming that they lacked "the brain capacity" of men. His staff was similarly inclined: when the program replaced Chef Perry with a female cook, one worker griped that ladies were not fit for cooking — or poisoning. "A woman! Tut, tut. Why the very idea!," he reportedly said, "A woman can potter around a domestic hearth, but when it comes to frying eggs in a scientific mode and putting formaldehyde in the soup -- never."....
....MUCH MORE
