Armstrong – Table of Contents

eaten. One patient who ate 5 to 6 olives died in 54 hours. A woman who ate ½ olive died
171½ hours after the dinner. In the 7 non-fatal cases there was a correlation in declining
illness severity with the ingestion of from 2 olives to 1 bite. Armstrong speculated that
some variation in illness and death with the number of olives eaten occurred because one
of the waiters serving the Sebring table washed two of the olive-containing serving
dishes, but not the third, prior to putting the dishes on the table.
Among the waiters at the club, there was a custom of collecting the remaining delicacies
after the diners had finished eating; the two waiters poisoned collected the left over olives
and ate some of them. Later, the waiter who survived carried the olives to the chef with
the request that he try one of them because they “didn’t taste right” to the waiter. The
chef ate 2 olives and later died.
Armstrong provided the following epidemiological summary for this investigation (9):
“1. The ripe olives were known to have had a peculiar taste and color, and, in the light of
the epidemiological data and circumstances under which the poisoning occurred, it did
not seem possible to hold any other article of the menu to be the vehicle of the poisoning.
“2. The limitation of the poison to the diners of the Sebring table, to the waiters of this
table and to the chef, is explained by the theory that the ripe olives were the poisoning
agent.
“3. Fourteen of the of the 17 who ate or tasted the ripe olives were definitely ill.
“4. None were ill who did not eat the ripe olives.
“5. Severity of the illness in each case was, in general, proportionate to the number of
olives eaten.