Again, Ergot

The fulminating affliction of the food, drug & insecticide administration of the Department of Agriculture, the "scandal" of ergot, came up again last week. Walter Gilbert Campbell, director of the department's regulatory work took it before the Senate Committee on Agriculture & Forestry. He wished to clear the administration of Dr. Henry Kurd Rusby's long repeated charges that it was willfully permitting the importation of rotten ergot, fluid extract of which (says Dr. Rusby) is killing large numbers of women in childbirth (TIME, April 15, 1929).

Ergot is a rust on the heads of rye. Ergot extract is widely used in obstetrics, to cause contraction of the uterus and control uterine bleeding. The physiological action of the extract is not precise, a fault of many drugs of vegetable origin. Their composition is complex and variable. Hence physicians lately have been adopting more controllable products. In obstetrics, pituitary solutions refined from the pituitary glands >of animals are supplanting ergot. But great quantities of fluid extract of ergot are still used. The raw material reaches the U. S. from Russia (and Poland) and Spain (and Portugal).

Dr. Rusby, 75, retiring (this month) dean of Columbia University's Department of Pharmacy, one of the revisers of the U. S. pharmacopoeia, reiterated to the Senate's investigating committee last week the well-known fact that Spanish ergot is better than Russian ergot. The Russian product until recent months has been wormy, lousy and rotten, due to careless handling. Only a low-grade and deleterious extract, says Dr. Rusby, can be made from it. He charged that the food, drug & insecticide administrator has been illegally admitting rotten raw ergot into the U. S. due to the blandishments of manufacturing pharmacists who claimed they could recondition the polluted raw material and make from it an efficient extract.

Supporting the pharmacology of Dr. Rusby, to whom Pure Ergot has become the crusade of a pure scientist, were able testifiers--Dr. Edward Joseph Ill, chairman of an investigating committee of the American Association of Obstetricians, gynecologists & abdominal surgeons; Dr. Carl Haller Ill of Newark, N. J.; Professor Heber Wilkinson Youngken of Boston; Dr. Walter Barclay Mount of Montclr, N. J.; Professor Fanchon Hart of Columbia University; Dr. F. Garrison of the National Association of Drug Clerks. Dr. Harvey Washington Wiley, 85, of Washington, who was largely instrumental in setting up the pure food and drug laws 24 years ago, also appeared for his friend Dr. Rusby to state that he believed "the accusations were true in many respects."

Another prime supporter of Dean Rusby's contentions was a Manhattan importer and consulting chemist named Howard W. Ambruster. He specializes in arsenic and arsenical preparations for insect control. Three years ago he heard that U. S. ergot preparations were adulterated. He believed the situation was opportune for him to make money by importing clean Spanish ergot. He bought 70,000 Ib.--virtually a "corner" of the supply at that time--for $1.60 to $1.70 per Ib. The U. S. market price for ergot was then $1.15. He offered manufacturing druggists his ergot at $1.50. None would buy. Although later he sold small quantities he still has practically all his 1927 ergot on his hands.

When hearings closed for the week-end it was apparent that this week's rebuttal would come not only from the Federal officials accused but from manufacturing pharmacists whose good reputation was being impugned by Dean Rusby and Importer Ambruster. The direction of the manufacturers' testimony, endorsed by pharmacologists of Dean Rusby's grade, was to be: 1) that Spanish ergot is commercially better than Russian ergot because more fluid extract can be made from a given amount, 2) that Russian ergot can be and is being made into safe fluid extracts which satisfy the high standard of the U. S. pharmacopoeia, 3) that the ergot "scandal," apart from Dean Rusby's idealistic intervention, is nothing but a commercial fight, nothing at which citizens need take alarm.

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