Chapter Three 



Not Too Hot to Handle 



Did If Taste Good? 



ITXE felt very nervous and sick at the stom- 

 ach. Then he began to vomit. Something was wrong with 

 his jaws: they were painful and felt stiif. The trouble seemed 

 to start when he took that last chew of tobacco a few hours be- 

 fore. But how could that cause it? He had chewed tobacco for 

 years — that same brand of plug — and had never noticed any- 

 thing like it before. Perhaps his quid did taste slightly dif- 

 ferent than usual, but then, when you carry a plug of tobacco 

 around in your pants pocket along with everything else you 

 put in your pocket during the day, you can't expect it to taste 

 the same every time you bite off a chunk. After all, a farm 

 hand can't be too particular; he can't throw his plug of to- 

 bacco away just because it gets a little dirt on it. 



But the doctor was curious; he had never before en- 

 countered this combination of symptoms. However, the sore 

 jaws, the twitchings, the muscular tremors, and the nervous-, 

 ness had been observed by a number of investigators when 

 they administered toxic doses of DDT to experimental ani- 

 mals. Had this man been using DDT? As a matter of fact 

 he had carried around a bottle of a DDT-kerosene solution 

 earlier in the day. And he had carried it in the same pocket 

 where he kept his tobacco! Could the stopper have come 



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