“Well, we sued a doctor in Toledo, Ohio”.
I said, “Is that a threat to me?”.
He didnt know.
“Now,” I said, “I want to ask you, since you are an aluminum salesman, how can you account for what takes place if you just put water in an aluminum kettle and let it stand overnight”.
“Well,” he said, “it leaves a mark”.
I said, “What happens if you put some tomatoes in there and cook them?”. “Well, it clears up the kettle”.
“Yes, you are right, but who gets the dirt?”.
I said, “Furthermore, you often hear or see in the paper in the summertime where there was a picnic and a lot of ptomaine poisoning. That is not ptomaine poisoning; that is aluminum poisoning. They go in the market and buy the best that can be had and cook it in an aluminum kettle, and in four or five hours there is trouble”.
They didnt sue me.
In one case I sent a pathological specimen to a chemist in Scranton to test particularly whether there was aluminum detectable in an analysis, and he found it.
DR. ALMFELT: I am another “nut” on aluminum poisoning.
Last fall a man came to me suffering from sclerosis of the spine, to a degree where he couldnt even walk. He was absolutely and invalid. He himself was quite a scientific man, a student of all these things. Like Dr. Carr, he outlined a splendid history of himself in his own case, and he claimed that his condition was caused entirely by aluminum poisoning.
Now, I dont know whether that was entirely true or not. I cant verify that because I wasnt able to help the man very much, all at once, so he didnt stay long with me. Nevertheless, I see it almost every day in my practice, because I have only chronic diseases. Some years ago, in England they tested out this aluminum poisoning under control in a childrens hospital in Liverpool. It might be interesting to you to learn that they discovered that when they fed children on food cooked in aluminum pots, they developed all kinds of diseases, asthma, bronchitis, diarrhoea, constipation, or anything at all; and if you boil milk in an aluminum pot, you would get as much as 140 grains of aluminum into one gallon of milk, and when you drink this two or three times a day, (or coffee from an aluminum pot) you are bound to get obscure symptoms of aluminum poisoning.
It is important that doctors pay more attention to this aluminum business, because it is worse than we realize. It is a human health, and we, as doctors, should give more attention to it than we do.
Over at Cornell University when these wares came out, they were tested and found poisonous, but this squelched pretty quick, because the great aluminum corporation of America wouldnt have that.
DR. FARRINGTON: It isnt often that a physician gets up and gives an involuntary proving as Dr. Carr has done. The whole medical profession fails to appreciate the toxicity of drugs, and you know that especially in the “old school,” they will give a drug until it begins to produce toxic effects. In the old days they didnt even stop then, especially with mercury and quinine.
DR. Almfelt is right. We homoeopaths sit around and smoke and use aluminum kettles to cook our food in, and stay in the garage too long, and get petromortis, and those of the female persuasion may use a lipstick and some facial cosmetics that are poisonous, and it is really marvelous how we get by. It is marvelous what the human body can stand.
DR. ALMFELT: That is right.
DR. FARRINGTON: I havent mentioned one-hundredth of all the influences of a toxic nature that we are up against. It is only those who use this modern term of “allergic” that take notice.
DR. CARR: There is much to say on it. Seven years it is since I put out the paper Constitutional Effects of Aluminum, which went pretty exhaustively as to the source. Other doctors have seen poisoning of aluminum. It has been proved in the laboratory under Hill and Peterson, of Yale University, and disclosed on animal research or experimentation that the younger animals were not affected by the aluminum, but as age crept on, they were highly susceptible.
The only plausible explanation is the elimination. The older we grow, the less likely we are to eliminate thoroughly from the body.
It is a peculiar thing. Dr. R.M.V. Hunt-Cooper, Captain of the Royal Army Medical Corps, an “old school” man, wrote a pamphlet, Danger of Food Contamination by Aluminum, and pointed out a peculiar thing that in Germany, England, and France, aluminum sodium phosphate is prohibited in baking powder. Well, anything touching aluminum ware (which is highly commercial) is suppressed in this country.
When a paper came out in 1937, Mellon Brother, I believe, were the sole owners, controlled about 98 per cent of all aluminum products in the United States. I think that combine has been broken up.
The summer following the paper-it was read by title in Detroit-I returned from a months vacation. As soon as I got there, the Superintendent of the hospital called me in. He said, “We had a call here from Mellon Brothers.” The caller asked if he had a physician on the staff interested in aluminum.
He said, “Yes, he has had some experience”.
So they began to tackle the hospital, wanted to know how much aluminum there was in the hospital.
He said, “Yes, he has had some experience”.
So they began to tackle the hospital, wanted to know how much aluminum there was in the hospital.
He said, “To my knowledge, very little aluminum in the hospital; in fact, I wouldnt purchase any at all”.
He excused himself as rapidly as the could, but he left a four- hundred-page pamphlet with abstracts taken out of medical society and scientific society laboratories not only in this country but also in Europe and Spain. I didnt count the abstracts in there, because that was beyond me, but it was all pro-aluminum; so you see what the Mellon Brother have been up against. They have been fighting this teeth and toenail.
I went through that and I found one paragraph or abstract that damaged the whole program of that pamphlet, and I put that in that paper, Constitutional Effects of Aluminum. That was from a laboratory in Spain where all down the line even mineral water and backing soda, and acids, and alkalies, even exposure to moist air deteriorates aluminum.
I havent heard from Mellon much since then, but I might say that the Association can be proud of having their name on the stationery that has gone to Canada and even as far as Australia.
DR. Betts is a dentist, is connected with the National Health Association. He is in Toledo, Ohio, and he is probably the most vigorous fighter for the effects of aluminum. He procured several copies from me and he said he is using it very extensively. Also a chemist or scientist in Canada placed the paper before the British Commission of Health, and in this country a scientist in Pennsylvania did the same thing for the Government. This scientist in Canada was prohibited from entering the United States because of his opposition to aluminum.
Dr. FARRINGTON: I should like to ask the doctor a question. Did you notice any editorials in newspapers or any so-called health columns taking up this matter? It seems to me about the time that you read that paper, or shortly after, I should say, the Chicago Tribune had the health column entirely devoted to the lack of toxicity of aluminum when used as cooking utensils.
DR. GRIMMER: Some of these writers went so far as to state that aluminum was helpful because it occurred in plants, not taking into consideration the difference between the organic and inorganic salts of aluminum.
DR. FARRINGTON: Prussic acid occurs in plants.
