Harvey Washington Wiley (October 30, 1844 - June 30, 1930) Supported by the Department of Agriculture's chief Chemist Harvey W. Wiley, the Pure Food and Drugs Act (1906) was created in 1906 to protect consumers from potentially dangerous drugs and food. The act required sufficient that the consumer was given warning about the toxic or addictive nature of certain drugs or foods.

Toxicological Perspective

Biography

Wiley was born on October 18, 1844 in a log farmhouse near Kent, in Jefferson county Indiana, the son of a farmer. He enrolled in nearby Hanover College in 1863 and studied for about one year until patriotism inspired him to enlist with the Union Army in 1864 as a corporal in Company I of the 137th Regiment Indiana Volunteers during the American Civil War. He returned to Hanover in 1865 where he majored in the humanities and was a top graduate in 1867. Wiley then studied at Indiana Medical College where he received his M.D. in 1871.

After he graduated, Wiley accepted a position teaching chemistry at the medical college, where he taught Indiana's first laboratory course in chemistry beginning in 1873. Following a brief interlude at Harvard University, where he was awarded a B.S. degree after only a few months of intense effort, he accepted a faculty position in chemistry at the newly opened Purdue University in 1874.

In 1878, Wiley travelled overseas where he attended the lectures of August Wilhelm von Hofmann — the celebrated German discoverer of several organic tar derivatives, including aniline. While in Germany, Wiley was elected to the prestigious German Chemical Society founded by Hofmann. Wiley spent most of his time in the Imperial Food Laboratory in Bismarck working with Eugene Sell, mastering the use of the polariscope and studying sugar chemistry. Upon his return to Purdue, Wiley was asked by the Indiana State Board of Health to analyze the sugars and syrups on sale in the state to detect any adulteration. He spent his last years at Purdue studying sorghum culture and sugar chemistry, hoping, as did others, to help the United States develop a strong domestic sugar industry. His first published paper in 1881 discussed the adulteration of sugar with glucose.

References

External Links

wikipedia - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvey_Washington_Wiley