February 14, 1902
THE ANTITOXIN SCANDAL IN ST. LOUIS. If the St. Louis Board of Health was justified' in summarily dismissing from the public service Dr. ARMAND RAVOLD, the City Bacteriologist, for permitting to be sold and used antitoxin serum which he knew to be impure and unfit for use, thereby becoming accessory before the fact to the d**hs of thirteen children from tetan*s after inoculation, it would seem as if the District Attorney and the Grand Jury had duties to perform in the matter. The charge against Dr. RAVOLD is one of dreadful import. Select-ed as an expert to protect the people of the city from just such a calamity as has overtaken, them through confidence in his integrity and capacity, he is charged not only with neglect of his official duty in a matter involving life and d**h, but with builty knowledge that the serum prepared under his direction was poisoned with tetan*s germs, but which he permitted to go into use with the results which have spread consternation throughout the country and created widespread distrust of all such organic preparations. Respect for the medical profession does' not permit us to believe that Dr. RAVOLD committed this great wrong deliberately. He was probably careless, and by reason of this carelessness lacked the knowledge he should have had as to the poisonous character of the serum for which he was responsible. The decision of the St. Louis authorities to give up the production of diphtheria antitoxin seems to be Wise. It not a safe experiment in municipal trading under average conditions. The committee of the County Medical Association of New York discreetly avoided this question in its report on the management of the bacteriological laboratory of the Health. Department of this city, but from what it has embodied therein even a layman can see how narrow is the line between safety and danger, and how easily it might be pa**ed if a local political revolution should' displace the specialists whose work commands so much confidence fox appointees of the cla** most likely to be useful to Tammany. Good as the work done, by Dr. BIGGS and Dr. PARK undoubtedly is, the experiment of municipal trading in curative sera and vaccine virus is unsafe.
The antitoxin scandal in st. louis. 1902. New York Times (1857-1922), Feb 14, 1902, 1902. http://search.proquest.com/docview/96242250?accountid=14756.