348 



SCIENCE. 



[Vol. XIII. No. 32^ 



are mentioned as being apart of the literature of the subject. They 

 are entirely discredited by the later work of Stewart, of Marshall, 

 and of others, all of which will be mentioned later. 



In 18S2. R. C. Smith printed an account of more than fifty cases 

 of poisoning among English mill-operatives who had breathed the 

 dust of lead chromate given off from yellow dyed yarn in process 

 of manufacture. The cases occurred in his own practice and in 

 that of his co-workers, and authentication is complete. The effect 

 was chronic lead-poisoning, clearly developed. This account, so 

 important and interesting, is but a brief statement of bare fact. It 

 is to be found in the British Medical Journal, 1882. 



Five years before the publication of Dr. Smith's paper, Leopold 

 {Vierieljahrsschrift f.ger. Med., N.F. XXVII. 29) published an 

 account of a babe which he stated had died from breathing lead- 

 chromate dust from yellow dyed yarn. The cause of death is as- 

 signed to softening and perforation of the coats of the stomach, — 

 an opinion to which Leopold, apparently, was bent by the cases of 

 Von Linstow, already cited. As we now know quite surely that lead 

 chromate is not at all a corrosive poison, we must so far discredit 

 Leopold's case. In the same account he states that four adults who 

 breathed the same dust incurred chronic lead-poisoning. He was 

 therefore first to trace that kind of effect to the breathing of lead- 

 chromate dust, and for that work we cannot offer him too much 

 thanks. 



The report of Smith is followed chronologically by the admirable 

 work of Dr. D. D. Stewart of Philadelphia, the early history of 

 which is to be found in the Philadelphia daily papers of July, 1887, 

 and in the office of the coroner of that city. A few months pre- 

 viously, Dr. Stewart had found some cases of lead-poisoning, which, 

 through tenacity of purpose, he finally traced to bakers' stuffs as 

 the cause. He secured in a bakery the chrome yellow with which 

 these stuffs had been colored, and showed that the baker himself 

 was a physical wreck from eating his own wares ; and, moreover, 

 that several members of his family had died of lead-poisoning, 

 brought about by eating the chrome-yellow colored stuffs. This 

 latter was proven by the bodies exhumed by the coroner, who in- 

 vestigated altogether fifteen deaths. The work was done by 

 Deputy Coroner Powers, who, in an interview at his office on Sept. 

 10, 1887, told the writer that it was a small estimate to put at two 

 hundred the people in Philadelphia who had died of lead-poisoning 

 induced by bakers' stuffs. The causes of death, he said, had been 

 certified to various diseases, among them malaria and cerebro- 

 spinal meningitis, but that now all physicians agreed that they 

 were cases of lead-poisoning. 



One who had examined the mortuary records informed the writer 

 that others of these deaths were assigned to typhoid, typhus, epi- 

 lepsy, Bright's disease, and to lepto meningitis. The real causes 

 were established by Dr. Henry Leffmann, who analyzed the viscera 

 of the exhumed bodies. The victims had died of lead poisoning. 

 During the coroner's investigations, it was shown that the use of 

 chrome yellow by bakers as a coloring-matter was quite common. 

 At an inquest held July 11, 1887, the evidence of Dr. Miller of the 

 firm of Aschenbach & Miller, dealers in colors, was " that he be- 

 lieved that eighty per cent of the bakers in the city " used chrome 

 yellow in certain of their bread-stuffs. In February of the following 

 year, two of these bakers were sentenced to terms of imprisonment. 

 The courts appear to have been lenient because the bakers them- 

 selves had been so distressed by the poisoning. One of them had 

 lost a wife and five children, and was himself a wreck. 



The discovery of the cause of so much suffering and death in 

 Philadelphia is due to Stewart alone ; and no less to him is due the 

 action taken by the officers of the law towards the victims and the 

 criminals. 



The clinical history of Dr. Stewart's cases may be found in the 

 Medical News of three dates : i. June 1887, under the title " Notes 

 on Some Obscure Cases of Poisoning by Lead Chromate ; " 2. 

 Dec. 31, 1887, " Clinical Analysis of Sixty-four Cases of Poisoning 

 by Lead Chromate (Chrome Yellow) used as a Cake-Dye ; " 3. 

 Jan. 26, 1889, " Poisoning by Chrome-Yellow used as a Cake- 

 Dye : A Subsequent Clinical History, etc." The literature of the 

 subject has nothing at all comparable with these papers. In this 

 field the author stands easily first among his brothers. 



The chemical and pathological sides of the subject have lately 



been worked out, with painstaking and in the scientific spirit, 

 by John Marshall, M.D., of Philadelphia. His paper is to be found 

 in the Therapeutic Gazette iox Feb. 15 of the present year. His 

 experiments were made upon dogs, to which he fed pure lead 

 chromate in various quantities, up to eighty-four grams. Careful 

 analyses were made of the products of decomposition going on in 

 the living animals, and finally autopsies were performed upon their 

 bodies. The experimenter found that lead chromate had been de- 

 composed in the bodies of the living animals, and that lead and 

 chromium had been absorbed, and that in all cases " the stomach 

 showed no evidence of corrosion." This work of Dr. Marshall is. 

 altogether excellent. No epitome of it could do it justice, and of 

 course the workers in this field will read the original paper. It is 

 proof positive that lead chromate could have produced all the 

 effects which Stewart insists it did produce, in his cases. 



The work so well done by Marshall suggested itself to the pres- 

 ent writer at the time of the newspaper publication of Stewart's- 

 cases, and dogs were selected for the experiments. But it was put 

 a stop to by two discoveries : (i) that the writer did not possess 

 the knowledge requisite, and (2) that chrome yellow of commerce 

 was not lead chromate. This latter discovery arose out of the 

 analyses of various samples from many manufacturers, a few of the 

 results being as follows : — 



No. I was obtained in open market, and bore the name of dis- 

 tinguished manufacturers. It was marked " Pure Precipitated." 



No. 2 was given the writer by Dr. Henry Leffmann, before 

 mentioned. It was part of a sample submitted by the coroner of 

 Philadelphia to his jury sitting upon one of the poisoning cases- 

 unearthed by Stewart. 



Nos. 3, 5, and 6 were from a manufacturing chemist in Baltimore 

 who wanted pure lead chromate, and who undertook to obtain it 

 from among his correspondents. These three samples were certi- 

 fied as perfectly pure. 



No. 4 was given the writer by Dr. Miller, from out of the stock 

 of Messrs. Aschenbach & Miller, who as merchants were concerned 

 in the Philadelphia chrome-yellow cases. It was kindly submitted 

 as being of the kind used by the bakers concerned in Stewart's 

 cases. 



The samples given in the above table are selected as being 

 typical of good commercial chrome yellow. Efforts continued 

 through nearly a year did not result in finding a single sample of 

 lead chromate sold as chrome yellow. 



Having ascertained that commercial chrome yellow consisted of 

 lead chromate with lead sulphate, and with white lead frequently, 

 it followed that such a compound could produce lead-poisoning, 

 and certainly would if taken into the stomach during any length of 

 time. There could not exist, therefore, any doubt as to the cor- 

 rectness of the views of Stewart, so far as concerned the source of 

 poisoning. 



Shortly after newspaper publication of the Philadelphia cases, 

 the writer bought and examined in Baltimore several samples of 

 yellowish bakers' stuffs. None of them contained lead. But there 

 was no such result with certain kinds of candy. There was to be 

 had in two of the Baltimore public markets an abundance of candy 

 made from glucose, and colored by chrome yellow. Wit'n the 

 view of stopping its sale, one of the city papers agreed to collect 

 candy samples by means of its reporters, and cause them to be 

 analyzed. This was done, and on the first day of search five- 

 samples were bought in two of the markets. Four of the five con- 

 tained chrome yellow in quantity from 0.199 P^'' cent to 0.319 per 



