Speaker 1: You're listening to American Shadows, a production of iHeartRadio and
Speaker 1: Grimm and Mild from Aar and Manky.
Speaker 2: It was the way they moved that caused so much alarm.
Speaker 2: They were mostly men, middle aged, vagrant types of many
Speaker 2: with no control over their hands, and many having trouble walking.
Speaker 2: They stumbled like marionette dolls and bending a knee up
Speaker 2: to raise a floppy foot before planting it down on
Speaker 2: the ground again. Then the next leg, as more of
Speaker 2: them came, the doctors at an Oklahoma City hospital started
Speaker 2: making phone calls. A strange scourge was affecting people across
Speaker 2: the country. The doctors initially thought it might be a
Speaker 2: polio outbreak, but quickly realized they were wrong. They had
Speaker 2: been witnessing a lot of strange and scary things during Prohibition.
Speaker 2: It was a time of loopholes. People could no longer
Speaker 2: get alcohol from stores or bars, but they could own it.
Speaker 2: This led to a lot of bootlegging, sure, but also
Speaker 2: a lot of trips to the pharmacy. You see throughout
Speaker 2: history many medicines had some kind of alcohol in them.
Speaker 2: Even during Prohibition, doctors were allowed to prescribe alcohol in
Speaker 2: good faith when he was in New York City, Winston
Speaker 2: Churchill famously suffered a minor blow when hit by a car.
Speaker 2: The cure eight fluid ounces of liquor per day, according
Speaker 2: to his doctor. These prescriptions were quick and easy income
Speaker 2: for those doling them out and for those who couldn't
Speaker 2: get a script, and there weren't too many. Over the
Speaker 2: counter options were a popular salve. Jamaican ginger, which was
Speaker 2: mostly just ginger flavored alcohol, was a national favorite for
Speaker 2: all kinds of everyday ailments. But with the Prohibitionary Volstead
Speaker 2: Act came the order for the makers of the tonic
Speaker 2: to reduce the amount of alcohol and double the ginger.
Speaker 2: The result was a sticky, bitter black syrup that in
Speaker 2: no way quenched anyone's palate. Two enterprising men set out
Speaker 2: to fix this. Harry Gross and Max Riseman, two brothers
Speaker 2: in law from Boston, chose a chemical known as triortho
Speaker 2: creusal phosphate or the brand name Lindall to spike and
Speaker 2: repackage the syrup. With the compound was odorless and tasteless,
Speaker 2: but used as an additive in manufacturing laquers, not liquors. However,
Speaker 2: the manufacturer assured them it was safe for human consumption.
Speaker 2: They marketed the product as ginger Jake, but because Lindall
Speaker 2: was in fact a slow acting neurotoxin, a sweeping sickness began.
Speaker 2: In a few months time. From Kansas to Georgia, nearly
Speaker 2: fifty thousand adults were struck by an onset of neurological symptoms.
Speaker 2: They reported numbness, paralysis, and that same strained walk, and
Speaker 2: the latter got nicknamed jake leg, jakefoot, and gingerfoot and
Speaker 2: then some The Food and Drug Administration could do little.
Speaker 2: They were underfunded and understaffed. The investigation was handed over
Speaker 2: to the Treasury Department, which went on to arrest scores
Speaker 2: of bootleggers and pharmacists. At the end of it, Harry
Speaker 2: and Max were discovered to be the culprits of the
Speaker 2: epidemic and arrested for, of all things, misbranding a product.
Speaker 2: But their sentences were suspended and they more or less
Speaker 2: got a stern talking to, and the Ginger Jake survivors
Speaker 2: they lived out the rest of their days bearing the
Speaker 2: physical consequences of Max and Harry's greed. I'm Lorn Vogelbaum.
Speaker 2: Welcome to American Shadows. When we talk about snake oil.
Speaker 2: Today we think of hucksters and fraudsters and their colorful claims,
Speaker 2: But snake oil, the real snake oil, was a legitimate
Speaker 2: product until Clark Stanley showed up. He called himself the
Speaker 2: Rattlesnake King, saying that he learned of the snake's healing
Speaker 2: secrets from a Hope medicine man. In actuality, he ripped
Speaker 2: his inspiration from the Chinese immigrants working on the Transcontinental Railroad.
Speaker 2: They brought with them a salve made from the oil
Speaker 2: of the Chinese water snake, used for its anti inflammatory properties.
Speaker 2: Clark knew that he couldn't make a buck selling potions
Speaker 2: and promises to unsuspecting customers. All he needed was a
Speaker 2: good pitch. He was no doctor, but being a salesman
Speaker 2: got him a long way. Once upon a time, folk
Speaker 2: medicine and common sense were used to treat most ailments.
Speaker 2: People took care of their loved ones, but in the
Speaker 2: dire cases a country doctor who may also be a
Speaker 2: pastor or a veterinarian in a spare time might be called.
Speaker 2: But with the Civil War came a great leap in
Speaker 2: medical technology. For a long time, battlefield surgeons and medics
Speaker 2: tried to keep up, but they simply didn't have the tools, knowledge,
Speaker 2: or people power to care for all the troops. Hundreds
Speaker 2: of thousands of soldiers died, but their deaths wouldn't be
Speaker 2: in vain, though not for the patriotic and principled reasons
Speaker 2: you might imagine, as it would end up twice as
Speaker 2: many soldiers died from disease as from battle wounds, and
Speaker 2: because of this there were more bodies at the disposal
Speaker 2: of curious minds than ever before. The Surgeon General called
Speaker 2: for his officers to collect and send over any bits
Speaker 2: and pieces of battlefield epemera of body parts ballistics that
Speaker 2: might be worth studying. Out of these specimens, an Army
Speaker 2: medical museum was created for educational purposes. And as for
Speaker 2: the people who made it home from the battle front,
Speaker 2: they were pitched into the throes of what would become
Speaker 2: America's first opioid crisis. This was no push drummed up
Speaker 2: by big pharma. It was instigated by the Union itself.
Speaker 2: The Army had doled out nearly ten million opium pills
Speaker 2: to its soldiers and almost three million ounces of powdered
Speaker 2: opium and tinctures. The goal was to alleviate suffering, especially
Speaker 2: for those experiencing the long lasting physical effects of war,
Speaker 2: and when those pills ran out, the veterans turned to morphine,
Speaker 2: a drug that was readily available in almost every doctors satchel.
Speaker 2: It was used for everyday ailments, and by the eighteen
Speaker 2: nineties it's estimated that one in two hundred Americans were addicted,
Speaker 2: and many of the people struggling with addiction were, much
Speaker 2: to the establishment's chagrin, women. People were becoming aware of
Speaker 2: how dangerous opiates were, but because they were such a
Speaker 2: profitable source of income, many doctors were slow to cease
Speaker 2: writing scripts. One German pharmaceutical company offered their own sell
Speaker 2: to the epidemic, a Coff's present and chemical modification of
Speaker 2: morphine they called heroine, and as we know by now,
Speaker 2: people took to it in ways they never could have imagined.
Speaker 2: Clark Stanley, with his rattlesteak oil, wanted in on this
Speaker 2: market of people searching for cures. He showed up at
Speaker 2: the eighteen ninety three Chicago World's Fair with a gruesome
Speaker 2: marketing pitch. The captivated audience watched as he snatched a
Speaker 2: live snake from a bag, slid it open and tossed
Speaker 2: it into a boiling pot. He then skimmed the oil
Speaker 2: off the top, packaging it right up, and selling it
Speaker 2: from his platform to the clamoring audience. In actuality, this
Speaker 2: poor snake had no healing properties, and neither did its oil.
Speaker 2: But soon Clark's oil was all over the market, thanks
Speaker 2: to door to door salesmen and boots at county fairs,
Speaker 2: and nothing more than a blend of beef, fat, turpentine
Speaker 2: and red pepper. In its own way, the world of
Speaker 2: food and medicine was the wild West. It was an
Speaker 2: unregulated landscape marked by hucksters and frauds and no oversight.
Speaker 2: People could claim what they wanted, sell what they wanted,
Speaker 2: and tell people exactly what they wanted to hear. The
Speaker 2: general public was privy to this, and though they wanted
Speaker 2: to believe in these products, they had to be skeptical
Speaker 2: and their lives depended on it. In the early nineteen hundreds,
Speaker 2: concerned citizens, led by women, banded together in favor of
Speaker 2: a pure food bill, lobbying for the safety of their families.
Speaker 2: A moment of triumph came with the passing of the
Speaker 2: Pure Food and Drug Act of nineteen o six with
Speaker 2: the creation of what would eventually become the US Food
Speaker 2: and Drug Administration. It seemed like things were going to
Speaker 2: get better, but in actuality this would take a very
Speaker 2: long time, and with more lives lost along the way.
Speaker 2: Francis sat at her desk, ready to tackle the applications
Speaker 2: in front of her. She had her notepads and her
Speaker 2: pile of pens. She had the confidence of her mentor
Speaker 2: and the US government. Her tenacity and intellect had long
Speaker 2: guided her, and it had gotten her thus far. Even
Speaker 2: though she didn't have a uniform or a badge. She
Speaker 2: was on the front line of defense and the clock
Speaker 2: was ticking and unforgiving. Sitting in her office at the
Speaker 2: Food and Drug Administration, Francis was under the gun, and
Speaker 2: she knew the consequences could be deadly. For centuries, drug
Speaker 2: producers had been getting away with big claims. Their products,
Speaker 2: known as patent medicines, were in effect brilliant exercises in
Speaker 2: the seductive power of marketing. They were advertised on posters
Speaker 2: in newspapers and magazines and flyers. They were pushed by
Speaker 2: travel lling vaudeville style shows and door to door salesmen.
Speaker 2: These drug makers leaned heavily into the world of spectacle
Speaker 2: and miracles, and they often bulked at the most basic
Speaker 2: of safety measures, such as listing ingredients on their labels,
Speaker 2: testing their products, or not flagrantly putting toxins into the
Speaker 2: mouths of unsuspecting people. Such was the world that Francis,
Speaker 2: born in nineteen fourteen, had grown up in. She had
Speaker 2: always known that she had wanted to become some kind
Speaker 2: of scientist. She was applying to pH d programs just
Speaker 2: as the Great Depression hit, and knew that many schools
Speaker 2: were terribly inclined to take women. Still, she applied to
Speaker 2: the new pharmacology department at the University of Chicago and
Speaker 2: received an acceptance letter back addressed to a mister Francis Oldham,
Speaker 2: and she took the posting. She arrived in Chicago in
Speaker 2: nineteen thirty seven, right on time to take on a
Speaker 2: new wonder drug named Elixirs self nildamined, which was suspected
Speaker 2: of causing the deaths of more than one hundred people,
Speaker 2: and most of those dead turned out to be children.
Speaker 2: The public was incensed, and Francis had a new assignment
Speaker 2: figure out where this drug was going wrong. Francis launched
Speaker 2: headlong into her lab work and meticulously splice in part
Speaker 2: the chemical compound. What she found was surprising. In its
Speaker 2: original form, the drug was supremely effective in fighting off
Speaker 2: bacterial infections, but the makers had misstepped when they created
Speaker 2: a liquid, cherry flavored children's version. The Francis and her
Speaker 2: lab mates realized, to their horror that a compound found
Speaker 2: in that version of the elixir was usually used as
Speaker 2: an anti freeze and is a deadly poison. The drug's
Speaker 2: manufacturer was slapped with a fine, not for the resulting
Speaker 2: deaths of consumers, but for mislabeling their product. You see,
Speaker 2: they were not required to demonstrate the products safety before
Speaker 2: it hit the market, but because an elixir by definition
Speaker 2: contained alcohol, and there was no alcohol present in this
Speaker 2: liquid drug, they were caught on a technicality. The general
Speaker 2: public was outraged. In nineteen thirty eight, the Food, Drug
Speaker 2: and Cosmetic Act was signed into law by Franklin Delano Roosevelt,
Speaker 2: which allowed the FDA to require pre market approval of
Speaker 2: all new drugs. This was a huge success for the
Speaker 2: lab and the feather in Francis's cap. Now they just
Speaker 2: needed to figure out how this would work in practice.
Speaker 2: For many years to come, the FDA would be understaffed
Speaker 2: and underfunded. Francis Oldham Kelsey, married to another scientist in
Speaker 2: nineteen forty three, was later invited to join the FDA's
Speaker 2: new Pharmacology Center in nineteen sixty. She was known to
Speaker 2: be a talented analyst and was tasked with reviewing reams
Speaker 2: of applications from pharmaceutical companies a new drugs they wanted
Speaker 2: to sell, But her team was small. She was one
Speaker 2: of just seven full time reviewers whose job it was
Speaker 2: to keep the general public safe from predatory, money hungry
Speaker 2: drug companies. But the greatest kink in the process was time.
Speaker 2: The Francis and her team had a sixty day window
Speaker 2: for approving or rejecting a drug, and if they couldn't
Speaker 2: work fast enough, the drug would automatically go to market.
Speaker 2: In her office, she stared down at an application for
Speaker 2: a drug called by the brand name Kevidon. It was
Speaker 2: German in origin, having first appeared on the European market
Speaker 2: under a couple of other brand names, but the drug's
Speaker 2: generic name was belittamide. She had heard of it before.
Speaker 2: It had been used for sleeplessness and upset stomach over
Speaker 2: the counter even since the nineteen fifties. Some of you
Speaker 2: have probably heard of it too, But this drug's dark
Speaker 2: backstory and what it was capable of would take decades
Speaker 2: to unravel. The company that produced the litamide, Richardson Merrill,
Speaker 2: wanted FDA approval, and they wanted it badly. Their warehouses
Speaker 2: were stockpiled with the stuff waiting for the green light
Speaker 2: to go to market. They assumed that the approval would
Speaker 2: come fast and easy, and that they'd make good money
Speaker 2: in the process. The application for the lidamine was glowing.
Speaker 2: It included scores of rave reviews touting all the healing
Speaker 2: properties that a wonder drug could hold, and was especially
Speaker 2: popular for treating morning sickness during pregnancy. Richardson Merrill promised
Speaker 2: that the drug was non addictive, non toxic, and had
Speaker 2: absolutely no side effects. That last claim, bold and brash,
Speaker 2: was immediately suspect for Francis. The company couldn't have thrown
Speaker 2: up more red flags if they'd tried. It was a
Speaker 2: tale as old as advertising, big claims and empty promises.
Speaker 2: She dove in. What she saw in the application, or
Speaker 2: rather bidn't see, was cause for alarm. There just wasn't
Speaker 2: enough information there about any clinical trials to substantiate these
Speaker 2: big claims. There were no physicians reports, just glowing praise
Speaker 2: from supposed users. In fact, there was nothing objective to
Speaker 2: be had, so she denied the application and sent back
Speaker 2: her request for more information. In short order, she received
Speaker 2: back another stack of paperwork from Richardson Merrill, but the
Speaker 2: additional information they provided was simply more testimonials. Francis simply
Speaker 2: rejected them again. That's when the trouble began to brew.
Speaker 2: Richardson Merrill refused to take no for an answer. They called,
Speaker 2: they wrote, they visited her lab. They put the pressure on.
Speaker 2: She rejected their application a third time, pressing them on
Speaker 2: the question of potential side effects during pregnancy. They assured
Speaker 2: her the drug was safe, and after going over her
Speaker 2: head to the boss, made the concession of allowing warning
Speaker 2: labels to be put on the pills bottles. But to
Speaker 2: Francis this was a meaningless concession. She didn't want to
Speaker 2: take their word for anything. It was when she came
Speaker 2: across a letter in the British Medical Journal that she
Speaker 2: knew she was on the right track. The letter was damning,
Speaker 2: writing about his concern a doctor reported painful pins and
Speaker 2: needle sensations frequently experienced by those he had prescribed the
Speaker 2: drug to. Long term, then came a trickle of similar
Speaker 2: reports documenting cases of bodily numbness, in patience, and severe
Speaker 2: birth defects in their babies. The pharmaceutical company knew about
Speaker 2: the potential for nerve damage, but then neglected to do
Speaker 2: any studies in pregnant patients or even in pregnant animal
Speaker 2: other than humans, and what little they did know, they
Speaker 2: hid and pushed the drug to market. Even darker still,
Speaker 2: belitamide has roots in the Holocaust. In the shadow of
Speaker 2: World War II, twin brothers Hermann and Alfred Wurtz created
Speaker 2: a company called Kemy Grunenthal. It became a haven for
Speaker 2: Nazi scientists who had spent the last few years experimenting
Speaker 2: on captives at concentration camps. The brothers hired Martin Stemler,
Speaker 2: who was a lead thinker on the Nazi population policy
Speaker 2: and racial hygiene program. A fancy way of saying he
Speaker 2: got to choose whether people lived or died. They also
Speaker 2: brought in Heinrich Muktar, an expert on anti typhus work
Speaker 2: and single handedly responsible for scores of deaths across the
Speaker 2: concentration camps and ghettos. And finally there was Otto Ambrose,
Speaker 2: who had been given the nickname the Devil's Chemist. He
Speaker 2: was Adolf Hitler's chief chemical weapons engineer and was brought
Speaker 2: on as the chairman of Grunenthal's advisory board. Ambrose was
Speaker 2: known for his work with a nerve toxin called serin.
Speaker 2: If you recall the horrifying stories of the gas chambers
Speaker 2: used to execute millions at these camps, then you know
Speaker 2: this chemical an antidote was developed, and this drug, later
Speaker 2: claimed by Grunenthal to have been created before World War II,
Speaker 2: was Deldamite. In a potential effort to cover up the
Speaker 2: drug's dark past, the company didn't release records of its
Speaker 2: early trials, but documentation from the camps later revealed its
Speaker 2: extensive testing. They knew it was an effective sedative and
Speaker 2: also calmed upset stomachs, so they brought it to market
Speaker 2: in dozens of countries in the mid nineteen fifties, But
Speaker 2: soon a wave of birth effects began appearing. Doctors were
Speaker 2: seeing underdeveloped or missing limbs and defects in the internal organs.
Speaker 2: It would later be found to the pill was enough
Speaker 2: to harm i fetis, and some mothers were taking several
Speaker 2: a day. The first child thought to be affected by
Speaker 2: this drug was in fact born to a Kemi Grunenthal employee.
Speaker 2: It didn't stop until nineteen sixty one, another concerned doctor
Speaker 2: published a bombshell letter in the medical journal The Lancet
Speaker 2: linking the lidamide to these horrific birth defects. Grunenthal could
Speaker 2: no longer deny the claims, and the company removed the
Speaker 2: drug from the market that year, but no one was
Speaker 2: ever charged. It's believed that over eight thousand babies with
Speaker 2: severe delamide birth defects were born worldwide. No one knows
Speaker 2: how many tens of thousands more died in the womb
Speaker 2: or shortly after birth. Seventeen of these claims were confirmed
Speaker 2: to be linked to Richardson Merrill, who was so excited
Speaker 2: to get their wonder drug de litamide to market, prematurely
Speaker 2: distributed the pills to doctor's offices. If Francis didn't get
Speaker 2: a chance to deny the application for a four worth time,
Speaker 2: because Richardson Merrill withdrew it once and for all, the
Speaker 2: link between this drug and this harm came too late
Speaker 2: for tens of thousands of families, but Francis had quietly
Speaker 2: saved thousands more by asking questions about what lay in
Speaker 2: the shadows. Francis's career was ascendant. She became the new
Speaker 2: head of the Investigational Drug branch of the FDA and
Speaker 2: worked at the organization until she was ninety years old.
Speaker 2: She passed away at the age of one hundred and
Speaker 2: one in twenty sixteen. The latamaide and meanwhile is still around.
Speaker 2: In nineteen sixty four, a desperate doctor was trying to
Speaker 2: find relief for his leprosy patients. No painkillers were working.
Speaker 2: He knew the littemi hade caused birth defects, but no
Speaker 2: one could deny its tranquilizing properties. He was surprised to
Speaker 2: see that, within three days of administering the drug, all
Speaker 2: of his patient's skin lesions had healed. By the nineteen seventies,
Speaker 2: the drug was approved on an experimental basis by the
Speaker 2: FDA to treat inflammatory skin conditions. Since then, it's been
Speaker 2: used for symptoms related to HIV, IBS, arthritis, and lupis. Recently,
Speaker 2: it's been found successful in treating multiple myeloma blood cancer.
Speaker 2: Philidamide is finally doing some good in the world. Now
Speaker 2: that it's finally undergoing the research the Kemi Grunenthal neglected
Speaker 2: so many decades ago, There's more to this story. Stick
Speaker 2: around after this brief sponsor break to hear all about it.
Speaker 2: Jeffrey Sherman was one of the lucky kids. He was
Speaker 2: just five years old and so excited to tell his
Speaker 2: dad about what had happened at Scoll that day. Just
Speaker 2: a few years earlier, people had been living in fear
Speaker 2: of the virus. They were getting sick and staying sick.
Speaker 2: Every summer brought with it about of new outbreaks, and
Speaker 2: parents couldn't help but worry. Kids were especially susceptible to
Speaker 2: the havoc the polio wrought. The virus, made famous by
Speaker 2: President Franklin D. Roosevelt, was thought to be a childhood disease.
Speaker 2: While many children ended up being okay, others would suffer
Speaker 2: the rest of their lives from damage to their central
Speaker 2: nervous system. Some were permanently paralyzed and some died. But
Speaker 2: by nineteen fifty four a solution had finally been found.
Speaker 2: That year, mass andoculations proved to be highly successful. By
Speaker 2: August of nineteen fifty five, more than four million doses
Speaker 2: had been given, and one of the best ways to
Speaker 2: get these shots into the arms of kids was to
Speaker 2: give them in school, as if pop quizzes weren't scared enough.
Speaker 2: Doctor Albert Saban, though, had a less fearsome solution. He
Speaker 2: was working on an oral vaccine, one that would be
Speaker 2: able to be administered more easily. When Jeffrey got back
Speaker 2: from school, he had a story, but his dad was distracted.
Speaker 2: Work wasn't going well. Robert Sherman was in the midst
Speaker 2: of a crippling bout of writer's block, brought on by
Speaker 2: the high stress of meeting a perfect deliverable. His boss
Speaker 2: had hand picked him for the job, and no one
Speaker 2: wanted to disappoint Walt Disney. Humoring his son, Robert asked
Speaker 2: him to tell him about getting the shot, and Jeffrey
Speaker 2: quickly corrected him, but he told his dad that it
Speaker 2: wasn't a shot. Instead, the nurse gave him a little
Speaker 2: sugar cube with a drop of medicine on it, and
Speaker 2: he got to eat it. Robert abruptly halted. It came
Speaker 2: to him he had an idea. He quickly called his brother,
Speaker 2: a fellow songwriter working on the New Disney movie. One
Speaker 2: of their tunes had been scrapped and they couldn't figure
Speaker 2: out how to replace it. Nothing was landing. Mistakes forgetting
Speaker 2: this new film right were very, very high. Robert got
Speaker 2: back to work. He started scratching at a piece of
Speaker 2: paper and beget a masterpiece. Mary Poppins arrived in theaters
Speaker 2: in nineteen sixty four. She brought with her an iconic
Speaker 2: parasol in words of wisdom, including if you can remember
Speaker 2: the idea that just a spoonful of sugar helps the
Speaker 2: medicine go down.
Speaker 1: American Shadows as hosted by Lauren Vogelbaum. This episode was
Speaker 1: written by Robin Miniature, researched by Ali Steed, and produced
Speaker 1: by Miranda Hawkins and Trevor Young, with executive producers Aaron Mankey,
Speaker 1: Alex Williams, and Matt Frederick. To learn more about the show,
Speaker 1: visit Grimminmile dot com. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your
Speaker 1: podcasts