Perspectives

Two year old Alberta Yvonne Howell, the only child of a couple in Haskell, died on Oct. 15, 1937 after taking a poisonous but perfectly legal drug, prescribed by doctors and sold over-the-counter by pharmacists, that was blamed for ten deaths in Texas and another 97 in 14 more states in a six-week period. Salesmen for the S.E. Massengill Company of Bristol, Tennessee reported customers were clamoring for a liquid version of the miracle drug sulfanilamide. Samuel Evans Massengill, a licensed physician, assigned the rush job to his chief chemist, who discovered sulfanilamide dissolved in a drug called diethylene glycol. This was no secret in pharmaceutical circles. What was not as well known was the fact that sulfanilamide and diethylene glycol were a toxic combination. The Massengill chemist would have found this out, too, had he been given the time to conduct a few simple tests. But the boss wanted the product pronto, and the lab rat wanted to stay on Dr. Massengill’s good side. So he whipped up a 240-gallon batch of the concoction christened Elixir Sulfanilamide. Hundreds of bottles were quickly shipped to four doctors offices and 96 drug stores in 68 communities across Texas alone.