Forty years ago, when the U. S. was fighting Spain, an enterprising Tennessean, Samuel Evans Massengill, then 27 and not yet graduated from the University of Nashville Medical School, decided to manufacture drugs for doctors rather than practice medicine himself. His business, established in Bristol, Tenn., grew until it had $300,000 in assets. Then, two months ago, fatality knocked at its door. A new mixture of a new drug (sulfanilamide) with a new solvent (diethylene glycol), which Dr. Massengill's salesmen sold as Elixir Sulfanilamide-Massengill, was discovered to be killing its users (TIME, Nov. 1).
By last week the score of those who took the so-called elixir,* according to the U. S. Pure Food & Drug Administration which wants Dr. Massengill to show cause why he should not be prosecuted for criminal carelessness, stood at: 73 dead "as a direct result of taking the drug," and 20 more dead for whom "it has not yet been established that this drug was exclusively responsible."
Dr. Massengill, however, rallied friends around him. The local Chamber of Commerce declared: "It is only fair that the public be advised that the S. E. Massengill Company has been in business 40 or more years. That it has several handsome buildings well equipped with laboratory facilities, employs more than 200 people at Bristol including six graduate pharmaceutical chemists and other trained assistants. Dr. Massengill holds an M. D. degree, and is directly in charge of the plant. This plant manufactures drugs for human consumption which are used by many of the largest and best hospitals and physicians throughout the country. Never before has this company been subjected to any serious criticism of its products. Dr. Massengill is a man who enjoys an enviable reputation for his honesty, his business judgment and his all-round good citizenship. . . ."
His local medical society likewise passed a resolution saying that its members ". . . deeply regret the unfortunate occurrence and the unfavorable publicity to which the S. E. Massengill Company has recently been subjected and extend to Dr. Massengill and his employes a sincere vote of confidence in their integrity and honesty towards the medical profession and to the public and our assurance of our continued complete confidence in his products."
This new drug has been found to be a specific cure for blood poisoning and gonorrhea, and a powerful remedy for pneumonia and meningitis. It is also a distressing poison, sometimes causing, if not taken with proper precautions, itching rashes, jaundice, agranulocytosis (lack of white blood corpuscles, which the system needs to fight off infection) and cyanosis. Cyanosis is due to the sulfur of the sulfanilamide combining with the hemoglobin of red blood corpuscles. This prevents the red corpuscles from carrying oxygen through the system and as the result, the body turns blue. Such catastrophes may happen if a patient who takes sulfanilamide takes other sulfur preparations, such as Epsom salts (magnesium sulfate).