Armstrong – Table of Contents

“6. The fact that some of the olives were washed before they were eaten and some were
not, of our ignorance of the relative toxicity of different olives, of the effects of other
articles of food or drink on the poisonous substance, and of individual immunity or
susceptibility, together with numerous other factors of unknown effect, would seem to
furnish various possibilities for explaining why some recovered after eating more ripe
olives than others did who died”.
Armstrong reached the following epidemiological conclusions: The poison which caused
the death of 7 persons and the illness of 7 others, under the circumstances described, was
contained in a jar of ripe olives supplied by the hostess to her guests. He listed the various
ways that a poison could have entered the jar; by deduction, he concluded that the poison
in the olives must have been formed in the jar by the action of microorganisms.
Fortunately, 6 olives and a small amount of brine from the original jar were recovered; a
waiter had placed them in a club ice chest until the investigators retrieved them for
examination on September 3, 1919. Six olives and the brine were delivered to Dr. John
G. Spenzer of Cleveland, Ohio, a chemist, for examination. The olives were light brown
in color, soft, macerated and had a putrid odor suggestive of feces. Dr. Spenzer’s
chemical examination showed “zero volatile, irritant, corrosive, alkaloidal, glucosidal or
putrefactive poison”. A portion of the turkey served at the meal, also submitted to Dr.
Spenzer, as a control, for examination, gave entirely negative chemical and
bacteriological findings.
The State Department of Health received 2 of the olives and about 5 milliliters (1/6 of an
ounce) of the brine for study. Utilizing the facilities of the Health Department
Laboratory, Armstrong and his co-authors, R.V. Strong, a bacteriologist and Ernest Scott,