The Poison Squad: One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

“The banquet how fine, don’t begin it

Till you think of the past and the future and sigh,

‘How I wonder, I wonder, what’s in it.’”

These three lines are from “I Wonder What’s In It,” written by Dr. Wiley in 1899. Blum heads each of the chapters of The Poison Squad with a few lines from this poem in chronological order; the poem is rife with an exhaustive list of examples of adulterations known to have been present in food products at the time of its writing. Wiley presents in the poem’s imagery a table laid out with a bounty of options which should appeal to the diner, but which is deceptive and sinister in the hidden harms it poses.

Wiley and other pure food advocates were well-aware that the purchase and preparation of food for one’s family and friends was a source of pride and care for many consumers.

“’These were the first public attacks on me and they cut to the quick’ Wiley later wrote. ‘I felt hurt to be the victim of such insinuations and misstatements.’ […] The best way to respond to such attacks, he would gradually come to believe, ‘is to go about one’s business and let enemies do their worst.’”

A man of great personal integrity, Dr. Wiley frustrated those whose agendas and ambitions he thwarted in his uncompromising pursuit of the pure food cause. Wiley’s scientific methods were also called into question, typically by those without his level of expertise in chemistry and medicine, but the personal indictments against Wiley’s character were most distressing to him. Wiley realized that his detractors harbored a diverse array of motives upon which they acted, and he became confident that the legitimacy of his scientific claims would protect him from even the harshest scrutiny.