THE POISON SQUAD One Chemist's Single-Minded Crusade for Food Safety at the Turn of the Twentieth Century

"I Wonder What's in It," an 1899 poem by Harvey Washington Wiley, read in Dr. Seuss-style by Kirsten Potter, raises questions about the food listeners eat. Wiley, long the Agriculture Department's chief chemist, devoted his life to answering that question. Listeners may become uneasy about the borax, chalk, and other substances that were common before the 1906 Food & Drug Act. Potter adds humor, shock, and an indignant tone with her inflections and voices. An emphatic defense of "embalmed meat" seems ridiculous, while editorials defending Wiley take on a solemn air. Potter demonstrates the place Wiley's most famous study--dubbed the Poison Squad, for its tests on human subjects--had in U.S. culture with her entertaining reading of period articles and songs. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2018, Portland, Maine [Published: NOVEMBER 2018]