Armstrong – Table of Contents

a country club. I think there were 9(?) deaths and several sick who had recovered. I was
sent to make a study of the epidemic. It was in the time of prohibition, and the rumor got
out that it was the liquor – (that) it was wood alcohol. Since botulism dulls vision and
gives speech difficulty and wood alcohol gives blindness, too, - so there was not much
evidence (of the possibility of botulism initially). There was also a nasty rumor that got
started that Colonel Rybreck, who was a military man was there and he died; and that
Mrs. Garrison (the hostess) was in love with him, but she was married and couldn’t get
him so she poisoned him. Well, I went over and began to review the patients. Many of
them were from Alliance and Salem, and I stayed at home (in Alliance). The newspapers
did not know where to reach me so I wasn’t hindered or bothered by them too much, I
made a thorough study, I thought, and wrote up the report, and everything pointed to
olives. The olive people from California sent their head lawyer in to see Dr. A.W.
Freeman (State Health Commissioner) and he sent for me; the lawyer had a suit of
$100,000 damages for this (botulism) publication. Dr. Freeman listened to him (He had a
habit of blowing smoke rings.), he was a master of blowing smoke, just kept blowing
them, and blew one around the ink well. He kept this up and when the lawyer got
through, he (Dr, Freeman) handed him this report and said, ‘Read that’. (The lawyer had
not read the report previously.) The lawyer read the report, asked 2 or 3 questions and
gave up the idea of suing us. The outcome was (that) the company spent a half-million to
revamp the whole process of canning, and hired a man by the name of Meyer (possibly
Dr. Karl F. Meyer, a famous California microbiologist and botulism expert associated
with the Medical School, University of California San Francisco) to do the work for
them, and there never was a case of botulism due to olives since that time. That worked