Popular Science Monthly 1926-07: Vol 109 Iss 1

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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY SUMNER N. BLOSSOM, Editor July, 1926 Millions of Americans Are Committing SLOW SUICIDE Stealthy poisons are to be found in at least 92 percent of illegal liquor—What they do to the human body—An impartial investigation into the medical and chemical aspects of prohibition NEW chemical warfare is ravaging A the bodies of millions of Ameri- cans, threatening the general health of the nation. To combat it seems a task more difficult than protecting an army against military poison gases. It challenges doctors and public health officials more than infant mortality, more than ordinary epidemics, more than keep- ing our milk, our drinking water and our food supplies By Donald Wilhelm equally buoyant roommate broke in. “This is how: Some of the alcohol used in the plant contains a small quantity of cyanide of potassium. Somebody discov- ered that, if you shake this alcohol with skim milk, the cyanide combines with the milk and settles to the bottom. siphon off the top.” I shook my head, Then we and declined the free of pollution. I refer to western state that I visited last winter. And the next day, in the same eu- lightened state, in another city where is a plant making imitation ivory toilet articles, I was offered another drink. My host explained: “Our bootlegger gets his alcohol from the plant. It is perfectly good alcohol except that it is denatured with a little menthol. Some local people have drunk too much of it and got digestive the tremendous problem presented by the fact that millions of apparently in- telligent Americans are : aida fg THE arguments about prohibition, almost everything daily poisoning themselves has been discussed except the one fact which concerns the public more immediately, perhaps, than any other; namely, that rank poisons are stealing into the stomachs of millions of Americans under the guise of whiskey, gin, How dangerous are these concoctions? risks in drinking the brews from cellar stills like the one pic- tured here? Is America confronted with a new and insidious enemy to health and safety? In this article, an experienced investigator and writer gives —_- the best available answers to these ques- In presenting the startling facts Wilhelm has found them, Popuar Science Montu ty holds no brief either for or against Our purpose is simply lo tell what every- that is, brand of by drinking the deadly chemical concoctions which have been developed as substitutes for the conven- tional alcoholic beverages taken away by Prohibition. It is as if they had re- solved on a gigantic dance of death in the full of the moon; as if, by crazy incan- tations to sociability, they had hy pnotized themselves into believi ing that cyanide of potassium, for instance, is a wholesome drink. Cyanide of potassium, any chemical textbook will tell you, is a deadly poison —one of the most violent. The Real Problem of Prohibition tions. as Mr. prohibition. one wants lo know what the 1926 ‘*hooch” has in it. ~The Editor. wine and beer. Just what are the trouble. But a little won't hurt you.” : DUG into my pocket for : a leaflet every long-lifer : needs to carry in his bill fold : these days. The Govern- : ment Printing Office in : Washington charges five : cents for it. It is called 3 “Appendix to Regulations : No. 61, Formulae for Com- : pletely and Specially Dena- : tured Alcohol.” In it are H set down forty-seven for- ; mulae with which manufac- : turers of industrial alcohol : must comply in order to : make the alcohol they sell undrinkable. Formula No. 1 specifies that industrial alcohol to be used for any of more than a hundred manufacturing purposes, in A few drops will kill a man —will kill a horse. And yet, only the other day, in an enlightened Massachusetts city where a great electrical industry uses many bar- rels of industrial alcohol, I was offered a drink by a gay young man, a chemist. “It’s perfectly good gin, “Ww e make it!” “But tell him how we make it,” his * he assured me. drink. Their method sounded about as conducive to safety as crossing your fin- gers when you're falling out of an air- plane; about as reasonable as melting the solidified alcohol used for heat and pour- ing it through a silk handkerchief to purify it—a system of obtaining “potable” alcohol that was popular in a certain cluding the manufacture of imitation ivory, must be denatured by the addition to every 100 gallons “of five gallons ap- proved wood alcohol.” Quite different from “a little menthol”! Somebody had lied. hooch constitute the disease. Poisonous alcohol, o . . 7 . = ~ > ~ * . - . + * . . - o . a 7 - 7 - = But lies about new communicable substances such as wood however, tell no lies when we 9