[Granville-Hough] 3 Apr 2009 - Blue Language and the Jakewalk Blues - 2d part

[Trustees for Granville W. Hough]

Date: Fri, 03 Apr 2009 06:29:17 -0800
From: Granville W Hough <gwhough at oakapple.net>
Subject: Blue Language and the Jakewalk Blues - 2d part, 3 April 2009

"I can't eat, I can't talk;
Been drinking mean Jake, Lord, now can't walk
Ain't got nothin' to lose,
For I'm a Jake walkin' papa, with the Jake walk Blues,"
from "The Jake Walk Blues," by the Allen Brothers, 1930.

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(continued, from Harold Hopkins)
    For one thing, the largest number of victims were concentrated in 
States mostly dry by local ordinance or traditional temperance leaning.  
Here the drugstore had been doing business in jake -- produced since 
1863 -- long before Prohipition became effective.  For another, a great 
many of the jake victims were ashamed at being caught in their illicit 
pleasures and were reticent, sometimes stubbornly so, about letting 
their names be added to the growing statistics produced by jake.  To 
many people the miscreants brought down by Jakeleg were simply overtaken 
by a just retribution for flouting that most hallowed of U. S. 
Documents, the Constitution.  A proposal by a hastily formed association 
representing some of the victims, asking Congress to give them relief on 
grounds the Government had failed to protect them from an unwholesome 
proprietary medicine, died on the vine.
    Some of the victims died too, either directly of the paralysis or of 
its complications.  Some went to bed to stay.  Some settled for life in 
a wheelchair.  Some eventually progressed to crutches or walking canes.  
Some, like my father, became able to walk again unassisted, their 
flapping, uncertain gait making them the objects of ridicule.  A few 
lightly afflicted victims recovered almost completely.
    The climate that made the Jakeleg epidemic possible was almost 
predictable -- an outcome of the difficulty of enforcing Prohibition, 
abetted by bootlegger's greed.   Those enforcing the Nation Prohibition 
(Volstead) Act did not take long to discover that some people were 
escaping its effect by drinking a drug product called tincture of 
Jamaica ginger, an alcoholic mixture with just enough of the expensive 
Jamaican variety of ginger for flavoring.
     At first, the prohibition Agency required the bottlers of these 
tinctures to operate with a special permit, but as it became obvious 
that jake was being used almost exclusively as a beverage, the Agency 
restricted marketing to the almost undrinkable fluid extract of ginger.  
Agents announced that tey would seize any product that they found did 
not meet the U. S. Pharmacopoeia's specifications for fluid extract of 
ginger, which called for so much ginger solids to be dissolved in the 
alcohol that most people found the mixture too hot to drink as a 
beverage.  That satisfied the Prohibition Agency, which considered it 
officially nonpotable.  A spoonful in a glass of sweetened water was all 
most people could swallow.
    Some drank the supernot stuff anyway, spiking it or chasing it with 
a milder beverage such as soda pop, but the U.S.P. Formula requirement 
effectively knocked the bottom out of the legal jake trade.  Some of the 
Jake makers and their clients -- whose main jobs were to verify that the 
alcohol they purchased from various sources was potable and not cut with 
water and other cheaper ingredients -- were directly affiliated with 
bootleggers, from whom they got their alcohol.  They looked for ways to 
get around the Prohibition Agency requirement.  Into some jake went 
various ingredients the formulators felt would neutralize the ginger or 
substitute for it and still get past the Agency's chemical tests.  The 
key to expanding sales was to use nonginger ingredients difficult to 
identify by routine Government tests.
    These were tricks of the bootleg trade, old stuff to those who had 
long operated outside the law.  Alcohol would be bought from illegal 
sources and fluid extract of ginger from a legitimate company, and these 
could be mixed with various adulterants to neutralize or mask the 
stronger taste.  Typical ingredients were rosin, castor oil, and balsam 
of tolu.  Although some were not necessarily harmful, they had no place, 
and thus were illegal in the U.S.P. version of flluid extract of ginger.
    Most of these ingredients were difficult to identify in jake, given 
the state of field analytical chemistry in 1930.  This minor difficulty 
did not seem of earthshaking importance.  At this time -- 8 years before 
enactment of the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act -- the Food and Drug 
Administration operated under the Food and Drug Act of 1906.  Under that 
law a drug product did not have to be proved safe before marketing, of 
for that matter, effective either.  FDA applied most of its attention to 
drugs considered potentially the most dangerous.  Since jake up to that 
time seemed relatively harmless, and since the tough Prohibition Agents 
were looking at jake manufacturers very closely, that product was not 
one of FDA'a major concerns.
    Then the Jakeleg epidemic hit.
    Late in February 1930, several cases of a peculiar paralysis came to 
the attention of doctors in an Oklahoma City hospital.  Then the 
Oklahoma City Health Department reported around 60 cases of the same 
malady.  Then epidemic reports began coming from several states almost 
simultaneously. in each the signs of paralytic effects became apparent 
about 10 days after drinking jake.
    By April 23 a total of 536 cases were on record in 39 Oklahoma 
counties and, since many of the victims were ashamed and reluctant to 
report their affliction and its cause, health authorties estimated the 
actual number at 1,500 to 2,000.  Other large outbreaks occurred in 
Southern and Midwestern States: Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, 
Tennessee, Kentucky, Ohio, Missouri, and Kansas.  Smaller epidemics were 
reported in Rhode Island, Maine, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, New York, 
New Jersey, New Hampshire, and Indiana.
    From the beginning, there was never any question that the paralysis 
came from drinking jake.  And almost as quickly the batches of poisoned 
jake were traced by FDA or Prohibition Agents through dealers and 
distributors to one firm in Boston, Hub Products Co., which also 
operated under several other names, including Fulton Specialty Co.
(To be continued - learn how those responsible for the poisoned jake 
escaped punishment.)