![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
Abstract
This paper describes the resources, scientific spaces, and experts involved in the study of a mass poisoning caused by the drinking of arsenic-contaminated wine exported from Spain to France in 1932. Local and international periodicals record the poisoning of 300 French sailors, and stressed the commercial implications of the case. We discuss the reports prepared by different experts (mainly physicians, agricultural engineers, and customs chemists). Their work was not limited to preparing technical publications or chemical analyses; they also actively defended the quality of their local wine, and played a major role in the discussions regarding the regulation of the international wine market in the 1930s, when new standards regarding the analysis of wine were being considered. Curiously, this well-publicised case of mass poisoning did not have any noticeable consequences in the international regulation of wine. This absence of subsequent regulatory action and the role of experts are central topics of the paper.
Acknowledgements
An earlier version of the paper was presented at a 2016 conference in Lisbon entitled “Old and New Worlds: The Global Challenges of Rural History.” We are grateful to Jaume Sastre, and other members of the Centro Interuniversitário de História das Ciências e da Tecnologia, as well as to José Ramón Bertomeu (Universitat de València) for his valuable comments and suggestions, as well as to Alan Rocke for his detailed editorial support. We are also indebted to Eduardo Alonso Fernández and Fernando Lázaro Castillo at the Spanish Tax Agency.
Notes on contributors
Ignacio Suay-Matallana is Assistant Professor of History of Science at the University Miguel Hernández, and also serves as secretary of the EuCheMS Working Party on History of Chemistry. His main research interests are related to modern history of science and chemistry, especially sites of chemistry, material culture, textbooks, experts and regulations. Address: Departamento de Salud Pública, Historia de la Ciencia, Facultad de Medicina, Universidad Miguel Hernández, Crta. Nacional, N-332, s/n, 03550 Sant Joan, Alicante, Spain. Email: [email protected].
Ximo Guillem-Llobat is Senior Lecturer of History of Science at the Universitat de València and researcher at the López Piñero Institute for the History of Medicine and Science. His research interests include different approaches to the history of food systems and specifically of food safety regulation in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Currently, he is working on the regulation of environmental toxicants (fumes, pesticides) and dealing with experts, regulatory science, and agnotology. Address: Institut Interuniversitari López Piñero, Plaça Cisneros, 4, 46003 Valencia, Spain. Email: [email protected].
Notes
1 Erich Urbach, Skin Diseases, Nutrition and Metabolism (London: William Heinemann, 1946), 284; John Emsley, The Elements of Murder: A History of Poison (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 99.
2 Alessandro Stanziani, Histoire de la qualité alimentaire: XIXe–XXe siècle (Paris: Seuil, 2005).
3 Peter J. Atkins, Peter Lummel, and Derek J. Oddy, eds., Food and the City in Europe since 1800 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007); John Burnett, Plenty and Want: A Social History of Diet in England from 1815 to the Present Day (London: Scholar Press, 1979); Madeleine Ferrières, Histoire des peurs alimentaires du Moyen Âge à l’aube du XXe siècle (Paris: Seuil, 2002); Michael French and Jim Phillips, Cheated not Poisoned? Food Regulation in the United Kingdom, 1875–1938 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004).
4 Juan Piqueras Haba, La Estación de Viticultura y Enología de Requena, 1911–2011: Un siglo al servicio del sector vitivinícola, la formación de enólogos y el fomento de cooperativismo (Valencia: Publicacions de la Universitat de València, 2011); Juan Pan-Montojo, La bodega del mundo: La vid y el vino en España (1800–1936) (Madrid: Alianza Universidad, 1994); James Simpson, Creating Wine: The Emergence of a World Industry, 1840–1914 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011).
5 José Ramón Bertomeu Sánchez, “Managing Uncertainty in the Academy and the Courtroom: Normal Arsenic and Nineteenth-Century Toxicology,” Isis 104 (2003): 197–225; Tal Golan, Laws of Man and Laws of Nature: A History of Scientific Expert Testimony (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004).
6 When added to wine, gypsum (calcium sulphate) reacts with potassium bitartrate, naturally present in grape juice, to produce potassium sulphate, tartaric acid, and calcium tartrate. The last two products precipitate, tartaric acid partially and calcium tartrate completely. This helps to clarify the wine of impurities, and the additional tartaric acid increases the acidity of the must, which favours the fermentation of the fruit and the preservation of the wine. This was especially important in hot climates, where fermentation tends to stop prematurely as the wine yeasts weaken at temperatures of over 35°C. In such cases, volatile acids and mannitic bacteria can develop, making the wine unstable, with disagreeable flavours and persistent cloudiness. See Simpson, “Creating Wine,” and Pan-Montojo, “La bodega del mundo.”
7 Possibly one of the first municipal laboratories in Europe was created in Brussels in 1856. See Peter Scholliers, “Constructing New Expertise: Private and Public Initiatives for Safe Food (Brussels in the First Half of the Nineteenth Century),” Medical History 58 (2014): 546–63.
8 Stanziani, Histoire de la qualité alimentaire.
9 Ximo Guillem-Llobat, “Losing the Global View in the Establishment of New Limits to Food Quality: The Regulation of the Food Market in Spain (1880–1936),” Food & History 6 (2008): 215–46.
10 Daniel Nordman, Frontières de France : De l´espace au territoire, XVI–XIX siècle (Paris: Gallimard, 1999), 40–65.
11 The Excise Laboratory created in 1842 in the United Kingdom was possibly the first customs laboratory created to protect the revenue. See Peter W. Hammond and Harold Egan, Weighed in the Balance: A History of the Laboratory of the Government Chemist (London: H.M.S.O, 1992), 292.
12 Antonio López González, “50 aniversario: Historia de los laboratorios de Aduanas,” Aduanas: revista de comercio internacional y estudios fiscales 254 (1975): 21–29.
13 Kapil Raj, “Go-Betweens, Travelers, and Cultural Translators,” in Companion to the History of Science, ed. Bernard Lightman (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell, 2016), 39–56; Ignacio Suay-Matallana, “Customs Laboratories, Chemistry and Excise: An Historical Introduction,” World Customs Organization News 77 (2015): 34–37.
14 Suay-Matallana, “Customs Laboratories.”
15 “Los laboratorios de aduanas, labor de un lustro,” Revista aduanera y tributaria 272 (1932): 510–11.
16 Leandro Prados de la Escosura, “La evolución del comercio exterior, 1790–1929,” Papeles de Economía Española 20 (1984): 133–50.
17 David Arnold, Toxic Histories: Poison and Pollution in Modern India (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 13–14.
18 James C. Scott, Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
19 Roy MacLeod, “The Alkali Acts Administration, 1865–84: The Emergence of the Civil Scientist,” Victorian Studies 9 (1965): 85–112.
20 MacLeod, “The Alkali Acts Adiminstration,” 111.
21 Following G. Kitson Clark, we could also define the experts involved in this controversy as “statesmen in disguise.” See his “‘Statesmen in Disguise’: Reflexions on the History of the Neutrality of the Civil Service,” The Historical Journal 2 (1959): 19–39. However, in this paper Clark was mainly interested in the conflicted relationship between civil servants and political representatives, and we will not consider this perspective. Rather, we shall build on MacLeod’s concept.
22 James C. Whorton, The Arsenic Century. How Victorian Britain was Poisoned at Home, Work, & Play (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); John Parascandola, King of Poisons: A History of Arsenic (Dulles: Potomac Books, 2012).
23 Bertomeu Sánchez, “Managing Uncertainty.”
24 Nathalie Jas, “Public Health and Pesticide Regulation in France before and after Silent Spring,” History and Technology 23 (2007): 369–88.
25 “300 French Sailors Poisoned by Arsenic in Wine Rations,” The New York Times, 2 April 1932: 9.
26 “Du vin d'Espagne à l'arsenic. Des certaines d’intoxiqués,” L’Express du Midi, 25 April 1932: 2.
27 “Le vin d'Espagne à l'arsenic,” Novelliste valaisan, journal quotidian, 27 April 1932: 2.
28 “Arsenic in Wine: 300 Cases of Poisoning at Le Havre,” The Singapore and Mercantile Advertiser, 24 May 1932: 14.
29 Juan Manuel García Bartolomé (coord.), Historia del Ministerio de Agricultura 1900-2008: Política agraria y pesquera de España (Madrid: Ministerio de Medio Ambiente y Medio Rural y Marino, 2011).
30 “Los envenenados con vinos que contenían arsénico siguen aumentando,” La Correspondencia de Valencia, 28 April 1932: 6.
31 “En el puerto del Havre más de 300 intoxicados por beber vinos españoles,” La Correspondencia de Valencia, 27 April 1932: 4.
32 “Una intoxicación de las tripulaciones de varios barcos francés,” La Prensa: diario republicano, 4 May 1932: 2.
33 Enrique Badenes, “Las intoxicaciones de El Havre no fueron producidas por vinos españoles. Desde hace seis meses Valencia no exporta vinos a Francia,” El Sol, 10 May 1932: 3.
34 Badenes, “Las intoxicaciones de El Havre,” 3.
35 Harry W. Paul, Science, Vine, and Wine in Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 102.
36 Charles Quittanson, L'Élite des vins de France, spiritueux, eaux-de-vie et liqueurs (Paris: Centre National de Coordination, 1967), 59.
37 “La campaña extranjera contra los vinos españoles,” La Luz, 4 May 1932: 4. A similar note was published in other Spanish newspapers, such as: “La campaña francesa contra los vinos españoles,” Heraldo de Madrid, 13 May 1932: 3; “La campaña francesa contra los vinos españoles,” La Libertad, 13 May 1932: 2; “La campaña francesa contra los vinos españoles,” El Luchador, 14 May 1932: 6; “La campaña francesa contra los vinos españoles,” ABC, 15 May 1932: 45; “La campaña extranjera contra los vinos españoles,” El Luchador, 19 May 1932: 1; and “La campaña extranjera contra los vinos españoles,” La correspondencia de Valencia, 21 May 1932: 4.
38 “La campaña extranjera contra los vinos españoles,” 4.
39 “Una maniobra contra la importación de nuestros vinos en el Marruecos francés,” Luz, 26 April 1932: 8–9.
40 “Extranjero,” El Magisterio Español, 17 May 1932: 16.
41 “Extranjero,” 16.
42 Jaising P. Modi, Textbook of Medical Jurisprudence and Toxicology, 10th ed. (Edinburgh: Livingstone, 1957), 512; Remi Fourche, Contribution à l’histoire de la protection phytosanitaire dans l’agriculture française (1880–1) (Lyon: Université Lumière Lyon 2, 2004).
43 Stanziani, Histoire de la qualité alimentaire; Ximo Guillem-Llobat, De la cuina a la fàbrica. L'aliment industrial i el frau. El cas valencià en el context internacional (1850–1936) (Alacant: Publicaciones de la Universidad de Alicante, 2010).
44 Jordi Cartañà Pinén, “Las estaciones agronómicas y las granjas experimentales como factor de innovación en la agricultura española contemporánea (1875–1920),” Scripta Nova 69 (2000).
45 “En el puerto del Havre,” 4.
46 Louis Thorel and René Vinzent, “A propos d’une intoxication collective par l’arsenic,” Annales de dermatologie et de syphiligraphie 3 (1932): 618–24.
47 Thorel and Vinzent, “Intoxication collective.”
48 Paul Chavigny, “Comptes rendus du XVIII congrès de médicine légales de langue française,” Annales de médecine légale, de criminologie et de police scientifique 1 (1933): 81–148.
49 Chavigny, “Comptes rendus,” 139. In 1933, a French medical student who did not participate in the study of this case affirmed that “the mistake was made in Spain, not in France.” See Émile-Jean Noël, Contribution à l'étude des intoxications d'origine alimentaire par l'arsenic (Paris: Thése Université Paris, 1933).
50 In 1932, another medical report was also published in a German journal. The chemical issue was not discussed, and it concentrated on the medical aspects, indicating that gastrointestinal disorders, pigmentation problems, and skin abrasions were the first symptoms detected four weeks after the ingestion of the wine. See Caspar Tropp and Gustav Rauch, “Über eine Massen-Arsenvergiftung nach Weingenuß an Bord,” Dermatologische Wochenschrift 95 (1932): 1023–31. Another German article on the same question was Peter Mühlens, “Ueber eine Massenvergiftung nach Weingenuss an Bord,” Deutsche Medizinische Wochenschrift 58 (1932): 854–55.
51 For a recent work on the history of the Manchester arsenic contamination of beer, see James Sumner, Brewing Science, Technology and Print, 1700–1880 (London: Pickering & Chatto, 2013).
52 “Arsenic Poisoning from Contaminated Wine,” Journal of the American Medical Association, 99 (1932): 318.
53 Claude Malon, Le Havre colonial de 1880 à 1960 (Coen: Publications des Universités de Rouen et du Havre, 2001), 215.
54 “A los republicanos antigermanófilos,” El Pueblo, 11 November 1917: 1.
55 Cour d´appel de Rouen, (Secue Inferieure), Tribunal du Havre, Cabinets du Juge d´instruction, Sont, Commission Rogatoire. Biblioteca de la Generalitat Valenciana, Archivo Bosch Ariño, caja 8, sin clasificar.
56 Cour d´appel de Rouen, (Secue Inferieure), Tribunal du Havre, Cabinets du Juge d´instruction, Sont, Commission Rogatoire. Biblioteca de la Generalitat Valenciana, Archivo Bosch Ariño, caja 8, sin clasificar.
57 Cour d´appel de Rouen, (Secue Inferieure), Tribunal du Havre, Cabinets du Juge d´instruction, Sont, Commission Rogatoire. Biblioteca de la Generalitat Valenciana, Archivo Bosch Ariño, caja 8, sin clasificar.
58 José Del Cañizo, “In memoriam: D. Rafael Janini (1866-1948),” Boletín de Patología Vegetal y Entomología Agrícola 16 (1948): 337–41.
59 Rafael Janini Janini, ed., El arsénico en los vinos (Madrid: Dirección General de Agricultura, 1933).
60 The work published by Janini also collected the opinions prepared by the agricultural engineers Cristóbal Mestre Artigas, Sixto Fernández Martínez, Manuel González Mostes, and José Romany (directors of the Oenology stations of Penedés, Valdepeñas, Penedés, Requena, and Reus) as well as José Salinas Iranzo, professor of oenology at the Agricultural Chamber of Valencia, and Francisco Bosch Ariño, a chemist at the customs laboratory of Valencia.
61 Rafael Janini Janini, 1933, L’Arsenic dans les vins: Valencia (Espagne) le 14 juillet 1933, Biblioteca de la Generalitat Valenciana, ref: Mss/314.
62 This office was created in 1922, but only started operating in 1927; “Prix de 500 francs,” Bulletin international du vin 7 (1934): 111.
63 Janini, El arsénico en los vinos, 4–5.
64 José Salinas Iranzo, “Informe de D. José Salinas Iranzo,” in El arsénico en los vinos, ed. Rafael Janini (Madrid: Dirección General de Agricultura, 1933), 30–33.
65 The Valencian customs laboratory was created in 1927 under the direction of León Le Boucher Villén (1904–1937), a chemist who did not participate in the 1932 case because of his research stay in Germany from 1931 to 1934: Archivo de la JAE, Expediente de Le Boucher, León, ref: JAE/84-102.
66 José Ramón Bertomeu Sánchez and Antonio García Belmar, Abriendo las cajas negras: colección de instrumentos científicos de la Universitat de València (Valencia: Universidad de Valencia, 2002).
67 Biblioteca de la Generalitat Valenciana, Archivo Bosch Ariño, caja 8, sin clasificar.
68 Letter from Janini to Bosch, June 24th, 1932, Biblioteca de la Generalitat Valenciana, Archivo Bosch Ariño, caja 12, sin clasificar.
69 The Marsh apparatus and test was a chemical method introduced in 1836 by the British chemist James Marsh (1794–1846), employed to detect minimal amounts of arsenic. José Ramón Bertomeu Sánchez, “Sense and Sensitivity: Mateu Orfila, the Marsh Test and the Lafarge Affair,” in Science, Medicine and Crime: Mateu Orfila (1787–1853) and His Times, eds. José Ramón Bertomeu Sánchez and Agustí Nieto-Galán (Canton, MA: Watson, 2006).
70 Fritz Hefti’s method was an improved version of Heinrich Gutzeit’s method, but replaced the use of silver nitrate by mercuric chloride. See Fritz Hefti, Bestimmung grösserer Mengen Arsen auf elektrolytischem Wege (Zürich: Juchli & Beck, 1907); Heinrich Gutzeit, Beiträge zur Pflanzenchemie (Jena: G. Fischer, 1879).
71 José Ramón Bertomeu-Sánchez, “Classrooms, Salons, Academies, and Courts: Mateu Orfila (1787–1853) and Nineteenth-Century French Toxicology,” Ambix 61 (2014): 162–86.
72 Francisco Bosch Ariño, “Informe de D. Francisco Bosch Ariño,” in El arsénico en los vinos, ed. Rafael Janini Janini (Madrid: Dirección General de Agricultura, 1933), 33–41.
73 Bosch, “Informe de D. Francisco Bosch Ariño,” 33–41.
74 Janini, “El arsénico en los vinos,” 16–21–23. When talking about the USA, Janini did not mention the development of standards for arsenic pesticide residues during the 1920s, with complex negotiations between the federal government and the states; see James C. Whorton, Before Silent Spring: Pesticides and Public Health in Pre-DDT America (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015).
75 Cristóbal Mestre Artigas, in El arsénico en los vinos, ed. Rafael Janini Janini (Madrid: Dirección General de Agricultura, 1933), 23–24. The context for the work by Mestre Artigas, Janini, and the others, namely the need to defend Spanish wine, could explain the certainty with which they referred to harmless doses of arsenic. Nevertheless, the issue had been extremely controversial in previous years, and especially so in France. See for instance Valentin Ros, Sur les dangers de l’emploi des sels arsenicaux en agriculture au point de vue de l’hygiène publique (Montpellier: Imprimerie Gustave Firmin, 1908).
76 Josep Giralt Raventós, “Cristòfor Mestre i Artigas (1879-1969): L’home i el científic,” in Vinyes i vins, mil anys d' historia: actes i comunicacions del III Col.loqui d' Història Agrària, ed., Emili Giralt Raventós (Barcelona: Universitat de Barcelona, 1993), 207–12.
77 “Los vinos españoles en Francia,” Diario de Reus, 21 June 1911: 1–2.
78 “Métodos de análisis de vinos,” Gaceta de Madrid 200, 19 July 1913: 138–59.
79 “Métodos de análisis de vinos,” 138–59.
80 Ximo Guillem-Llobat, “The Search for International Food Safety Regulation. From the Commission Internationale pour la Répression des Falsifications to the Société Universelle de la Croix Blanche (1879–1909),” Social History of Medicine 27 (2014): 419–39.
81 This regulation started operating in May 1933 with the main goal of facilitating the production, sale and circulation of Spanish wines. However, it did not satisfy all sectors involved in the wine market, as it was constituted in favour of large winemakers and exporters. Eva Fernández, “El fracaso del lobby viticultor en España frente al objetivo industrializador del Estado 1920–1936,” Historia Agraria 45 (2008): 113–41.
82 Léon Douarche (1883–1966), a French Ph.D. in law, was the director of the OIV at that time.
83 León Douarche, “Industrias agrícolas: La Conferencia Internacional del vino y el Instituto Internacional de Agricultura de Roma,” Boletín mensual de informaciones económicas y sociales (Instituto Internacional de Agricultura) 4 (1932): 154–56.
84 “Informaciones. III Congreso Internacional de la viña y el vino,” Boletín mensual de informaciones económicas y sociales (Instituto Internacional de Agricultura) 9 (1932): 378–79.
85 “III Congreso Internacional de la Viña y el Vino,” El Progreso Agrícola y pecuario, 1752 (1932): 1–3.
86 The range of possible tests included “mandatory determinations” detailing the chemical composition and main properties of wine, including the analysis of tartaric acid; another group of operations were just optional, and, a third group involved comprehensive analyses that included the determination of sulphites, sulphuric acid in white wines and colouring matter in red wines. Métodos oficiales para el análisis de los vinos, 3 ed. (Madrid: Ministerio de Agricultura, 1934), 77–84.
87 The other Spanish delegate was Juan Marcilla Arrazola (1856–1950), director of the School of Agricultural Engineers of Madrid. Other countries represented were Algeria, Chile, Cyprus, France, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Spain, and Switzerland. Métodos oficiales para el análisis de los vinos, 77–84.
88 The chemical tests decided by the experts were later approved at a diplomatic conference held in Rome in June 1935 under the title International Convention for the Standardisation of Methods of Analysing Wines. Some decades later, the methods were updated in 1954 during the International Convention on the Unification of Methods of Analysis. See Jim Bingen and Lawrence Busch, eds., Agricultural Standards: The Shape of the Global Food and Fiber System (Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, 2006), 91.
89 Métodos oficiales para el análisis de los vinos, 77–78.
90 “Informaciones. Conferencia diplomática internacional para la unificación de los métodos de análisis de vinos,” Boletín mensual de informaciones económicas y sociales (Instituto Internacional de Agricultura) 7 (1935): 358–64.
91 Bingen and Busch, Agricultural Standards, 78.
92 MacLeod, “The Alkali Acts Administration,” 19–39.
93 Bosch, “Informe de D. Francisco Bosch Ariño,” 38.
94 Janini, El arsénico en los vinos, 13.
95 Maurice Porot, Les intoxications arsenicales par le vin et les produits viticoles (Algiers: Ancienne Imprimeries Victor Heintz, 1938), 14.
96 Janini, El arsénico en los vinos, 9
97 Bosch, “Informe de D. Francisco Bosch Ariño,” 40.
98 Janini, El arsénico en los vinos, 9.
99 Janini, El arsénico en los vinos, 5–6.
100 Just one year after the intoxication Janini retired, but continued publishing popular books and journal articles. Francisco Bosch consolidated his position as customs chemist, and during Franco’s dictatorship was appointed chair and dean of the Faculty of Sciences of Valencia. Cristóbal Mestre continued working as director of the Penedés Agriculture Station, publishing wine and agriculture textbooks, and in 1946 was elected to membership in the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona.
101 Rafael Janini Janini, “Vino Cerveza y arsénico I,” ABC, 26 May 1933: 14; Rafael Janini, “Vino Cerveza y arsénico II,” ABC, 2 June 1933: 15.
102 E. M. Mrak, and G. F Stewart, eds., Advances in Food Research, vol. VIII (New York: Academic Press, 1958).
103 MacLeod, “The Alkali Acts Adiminstration,” 111.
104 Paul, Science, Vine, and Wine in Modern France.
105 Alessandro Stanziani, “Negotiating Innovation in a Market Economy: Foodstuffs and Beverages Adulteration in Nineteenth-Century France,” Enterprise & Society 8 (2007): 375–412.
106 José Ramón Bertomeu Sanchez and Ximo Guillem-Llobat, “Following Poisons in Society and Culture (1800–2000): A Review of Current Literature,” Actes d’història de la ciència i de la tècnica 9 (2016): 9–36.
107 Jas, “Public Health and Pesticide Regulation in France,” 369–88.
108 Alessandro Stanziani, “Defining ‘Natural Product’ between Public Health and Business, 17th to 21st Centuries,” Appetite, 51 (2008): 15–17.
109 The International Institute of Agriculture was closed in 1946, due to the Second World War and its effects in the global trade as well as in the scientific and diplomatic sphere. It was not until 1962 that the International Organisation of Vine and Wine (OIV) published a Compendium of International Methods of Analysis of Wines and Musts, with detailed guidelines and standards, and a specific reference to arsenic.