Iowa Heritage Illustrated

English

Iowa Heritage Illustrated, vol.86 no.2, Summer 2005

Lane, Tim

Saint Patterson 
and his Duck Soup
Clair C. Patterson, 1922-1995by Tim Lane
I
n the far reaches of our galaxy, former asteroid #2511 
now soars as "Asteroid Patterson" in a dark, eter­
nal, and silent tribute. On Earth, in a remote part of 
the Antarctic's Queen Maude Mountains, one peak now 
bears the Patterson name as well. Both are equally sym­
bolic of the greatness—and the obscurity—of Clair 
Patterson, a man some consider the most influential 
geologist of the 20th century.
There are individuals in the history of science whose 
efforts have touched nearly all of us: Lister, Pasteur, 
Fleming, and Salk. Those luminaries can claim to have 
benefited millions; Clair Patterson's work benefited the 
health of every person now breathing on this planet— 
an amazing feat for a boy whose first science lab was 
on the banks of the Skunk River.
Patterson's early intellectual sparks were ignited 
and nurtured with a chemistry set in the basement of 
his family's home in Mitchellville, Iowa, a town, he later 
said, where "creativity is not to be trampled on just be­
cause it's divergent from ordinary views."
Patterson's ascent was meteoric. He graduated from 
Grinnell College in 1943, after blowing up part of the 
chemistry lab, and then earned a master's degree in nine 
months at the University of Iowa. During World War II, 
he did atomic-emission spectroscopy for the Manhat­
tan Project. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry from the 
University of Chicago in 1950, and then received a most 
intriguing offer to work in a totally different discipline.
Patterson was invited to determine the age of our 
planet, a problem that had long befuddled geologists. 
The invitation came from a fellow scientist and master 
fundraiser, Harrison Brown. Brown had a rough idea 
of how this could be done and had secured grants to do 
it, but he needed a capable chemist familiar with spec­
troscopy. Patterson was young, capable, and on a very 
short list of people qualified to do such work. In 1950 
"mass spectroscopy experience" wasn't on too many 
resumes. What Brown wanted Patterson to do was ana­
lyze the lead in ancient iron meteorites and rocks. He 
theorized that a dating system similar to what existed
for carbon-14 could be created using lead. The carbon- 
14 dating system was only of use on objects less than 
40,000 years old. Going from carbon to lead would be 
like trading in a ruler for a very long tape measure. 
Patterson proved to be the right choice even though he 
didn't know a thing about geology or mineral separa­
tions. "It'll be duck soup," Brown assured him. That 
soup took the better part of seven years to prepare.
The research was conducted at the University of Chi­
cago and then Cal Tech. Fortunately, at both institutions 
Patterson was working in old, dirty buildings; he soon 
became aware that lead was omnipresent at substantial 
levels. He needed to measure incredibly minute 
amounts of lead to create his calculations, but massive 
amounts of environmental lead swamped the samples 
he wanted to analyze. It was like trying to hear some­
one whisper from ten rows away at a rock concert.
What Patterson did with this "problem" parallels 
what Sir Alexander Fleming did with the mold that 
appeared in his Petri dish, "ruining" his experiment by 
killing the bacteria. Patterson's observations later re­
sulted in further research and eventually legislation that 
would be crucial to the air quality of the entire planet.
In pursuit of his duck soup, Patterson learned that 
most of the tens of thousands of statistics published 
about the lead content of common objects were wrong. 
Our atmosphere was far more contaminated than any­
one knew. So before he could conduct his measurements, 
he first had to banish lead from his lab. No lead pipes, 
no water from lead pipes, no cans with solder, no food 
from cans with solder, no unfiltered air or lead paint. 
Patterson became obsessive in his efforts to eliminate 
every possible molecule of lead, including hitchhikers 
on skin, clothing, and every strand of hair. This process 
led to the creation of a state-of-the-art "clean" lab. The 
Patterson lab and his field procedures for procuring 
samples became the standard for all environmental ef­
forts. The final step was a measurement taken at the 
Argonne National Laboratory in Illinois. Plugged into 
Patterson's formula, test results indicated that the earth
92 Iowa Heritage Illustrated
C
O
U
R
T
E
SY
 O
F 
TH
E 
A
R
C
H
IV
E
S.
 C
A
L
IF
O
R
N
IA
 I
N
ST
IT
U
T
E
 O
F 
T
E
C
H
N
O
L
O
G
Y
and thus the solar system were 4.55 billion years old.
Patterson's euphoria resulted in heart palpitations. 
He was so overwhelmed that he drove to Iowa and then 
checked into a hospital. Over the last half century this 
estimate has been scrutinized and has withstood the test 
of continued verification.
Patterson then turned his full attention to the lead 
that had pestered his initial studies. He calculated how 
much lead ancient Romans generated with their coin­
manufacturing process. At one point he brewed a batch 
of sapa, the grape juice concentrate used by the ancients 
to control the fermentation of wine. The Roman recipe 
called for simmering the juice, herbs, and spices in a 
lead cauldron for days; the sweet taste of lead sweet­
ened the sapa. He traveled to Antarctica to pioneer cap­
turing clean core samples. Through all this Patterson 
collected more and more data on a clear, oily liquid 
called tetraethyl lead.
W
hen it had been discovered in the 1920s that
the tetraethyl lead additive could eliminate 
engine knock, there was a stampede to add 
it to gasoline. General Motors, Du Pont, and Standard 
Oil of New Jersey formed a joint enterprise called the 
Ethyl Corporation, which quickly became the tetraethyl 
lead provider to the world. What followed was an ad­
vertising campaign that spent millions linking lead with 
baseball, apple pie, and "the American Way of Life."
Although lead was widely known to be dangerous 
in the first half of the last century, it was still widely 
used. It was even sprayed onto fruit as a pesticide. Lead 
was easy to extract and work, and immensely profit­
able especially since it did stop engines from knocking. 
Lntil this time environmental lead was almost ubiqui­
tous. After the Ethyl Corporation was launched in 1923, 
lead was ubiquitous.
Scientists knew that the tretraethyl lead additive was 
a neurotoxin and could damage the brain and central 
nervous system. Most conceded that overexposure 
could cause insomnia, blindness, cancer, kidney failure, 
hearing loss, palsies, and convulsions, and lead to death. 
But what wasn't clear was how much lead was getting 
into the ecosystem and at what point it would be dan­
gerous. From the start, the Ethyl Corporation's own em­
ployees demonstrated symptoms associated with be- 
mg poisoned. The corporation responded by embark­
ing on a campaign that could easily be called a cover 
up to protect profits that grew from $36 million to $300 
million in a decade. The resulting seven million tons of 
lead consumed in internal combustion engines increased 
human exposure by a factor of 300 to 500. The industry
maintained that lead was a natural part of our environ­
ment and any elevated levels were natural and not re­
lated to exhaust.
The ethyl conglomerate funded almost all the re­
search about tetraethyl lead's effect on human health, 
research that conveniently focused on efficient produc­
tion rather than on public health. Ironically, after 
Patterson had established the age of the solar system, 
the petroleum industry funded Patterson's research on 
lead, thinking it might help them locate oil fields.
That hope was to end soon, as Patterson's studies 
started to contradict the rosy picture drawn by corpo­
rate executives. He studied the bones of 1,600-year-old 
Peruvian Indians to establish preindustrial levels of lead. 
The tests highlighted the impact of lead manufactur­
ing. He meticulously built a case focusing on two very 
significant facts. The first was that lead concentrations 
in humans had risen to between 500 and 1,000 times 
preindustrial levels. The second was that no threshold 
concentration for lead toxicity in humans had been es­
tablished. Beyond compromise or corruption, Patterson 
was attacked and belittled by corporation spokespeople 
and house scientists. However, all of Patterson's research 
has now been corroborated, and his methods have revo­
lutionized environmental and medical research.
Patterson had his allies. Novelist Saul Bellow cre­
ated a scientist (Sam Beech) in The Dean's December who 
was a paragon of virtue and meticulousness. Bellow let 
it be known that the character was not modeled after 
Patterson—it was Patterson. Bellow also was extremely 
vocal in promoting Patterson for the Nobel Prize.
A crucial ally was Senator Edmund S. Muskie of 
Maine, who chaired the Senate Special Subcommittee 
on Air and Water and was in charge of public hearings. 
Patterson's testimony, combined with one of his research 
articles ("Contaminated and natural lead environments 
of man") created a turning point and led to passage of 
the Clean Air Act in 1970.
Preeminent geochemist Gunter Faure was once 
asked his opinion of Patterson. "Patterson's a saint," 
he responded. "The fact that we stopped using leaded 
gasoline is largely his doing, and he showed you can't 
study lead contamination in humans because there are 
no uncontaminated people anymore. I think he was a 
very brave man. As a man, he ranks right alongside 
Newton and Galileo." ♦>
Tim Lane is the Fitness Consultant and ICN Coordinator for 
the Iowa Department of Public Health. In that capacity he initi­
ated FITnet, a daily e-mail publication that combines health and 
history. FITnet is delivered to hundreds of thousands of readers 
around the world even/ weekday.
Summer 2005 93


Saint Patterson and his Duck Soup

Witt, Bill

An Insider's View of the Iowa Capitol

Potter, Joseph Haydn

Dragoons' Map of Iowa Territory in 1844

Index for 2005

Juhl, Paul C

Stereographs and Lantern Slides: Along the Lincoln Highway Classroom Views of Iowa in the 1930s and 1940s

Schaefer, Matt

Iowa Physicians Ponder 
the Germ Theory
by Matt Schaefer
W
illiam Robertson's lecture on Asiatic cholera
was a yearly event at the State University of 
Iowa's Department of Medicine. Cholera was 
one of the most feared epidemic diseases in 19th-cen­
tury America, appearing periodically with devastating 
results. As professor of theory and practice of medicine, 
Robertson was duty bound to train Iowa's physicians 
how to recognize cholera, and how to minimize its 
impact.
Then in 1883, for the first time in a dozen years, 
Robertson did not present his routine lecture on Asiatic 
cholera. Research in Europe was leading to a new theory 
of its cause. German scientist Robert Koch, after a year 
of painstaking research, had isolated the specific bacil­
lus, comma vibrio, that caused cholera.
This bacillus was just one of a number of specific 
organisms isolated and identified during the 1880s. Eu­
ropean microbe hunters Pasteur, Koch, Roux, and Lister 
identified specific germs as the causes of anthrax, ra­
bies, cholera, tuberculosis, diphtheria, and typhoid fe­
ver. This new theory—that germs caused disease—was 
a turning point in medical understanding. The theory 
emerged out of increasingly rigorous laboratory science, 
the new field of "bacteriology,'' and improved micros­
copy. The germ theory gave doctors a better way to 
understand vectors of disease causation, and with this 
understanding, they hoped to offer better diagnosis and 
better treatment.
Koch's isolation of the cholera bacillus was widely 
publicized in Europe and the United States in the sum­
mer of 1883. At the State University of Iowa, Robertson 
was clearly impressed, both by Koch's reputation and 
by the quality of his new research. Robertson immedi­
ately revised his cholera lecture to incorporate these new 
findings. He rewrote entirely the section on cholera's 
cause, presenting 22 pages of new material to his class 
lecture in 1884. This new material is a powerful illus­
tration of the international sweep of the germ theory.
First Robertson laid out the old model of cholera 
causation: "This power of contagion resides in the dis­
charges of individuals infected with cholera and the 
agent of transmission is generally the drinking water." 
Although doctors had known for a generation that con­
taminated water was a vector for cholera, Koch had 
identified the specific agent in the water, the germ, that 
caused the disease. Koch's genius, Robertson said, was 
in " isolating from the numerous species of bacterial life 
that infest the intestinal canal, the one characteristic and 
constant form" that always appeared in Asiatic chol­
era. For Robertson, this was sufficient proof.
Then he went one step further, describing in detail 
the comma-shaped bacillus that caused cholera and 
analyzing Koch's methodology. This was unusual, for 
at the time, the university's medical department had 
no course in bacteriology, and the microscope was not 
yet a common teaching tool. The students would have 
to take it on faith that Robertson and Koch were right.
Other Iowa physicians, reading the same medical 
articles as Robertson, were not so willing to accept this 
germ as the specific cause of cholera. Many lacked mi­
croscopes, so they could not even see the germs. At the 
1884 meeting of the Iowa State Medical Society, R. J. 
Farquharson (then secretary of the State Board of Health) 
disparaged Koch: he had "failed entirely to [transmit] 
the disease, either by inoculation, injection or ingestion." 
In fact, Farquharson added, other physicians had drunk 
beakers full of the cholera vibrio without ill effect. He 
concluded: "The manner in which cholera is conveyed 
is not certainly known."
Other members of the Iowa State Medical Society 
also split on the issue of the germ theory. No clear con­
sensus was reached in the mid-1880s. As Des Moines 
physician George Jenkinson put it: "For each doctor al­
most ready to accept the bacterian theory as the most 
reasonable explanation of the etiology of all epidemic, 
contagious and pestilential disease," there was another
Summer 2005 57
physician avowing that specific causes "still elude our 
search, hidden by the matrix of the future.”
E
ven Robertson, avid advocate of the germ theory, 
had initially reserved judgment on Koch's asser­
tion in 1882 that a specific germ caused another 
deadly disease—tuberculosis. Tuberculosis was one of 
the most feared diseases in the 19th century, a "white 
plague" that cut down thousands in the prime of life. 
Koch had been widely hailed when he announced to 
the world in 1882 that he had identified the bacillus that 
caused tuberculosis, but Robertson did not modify his 
lectures on pulmonary consumption and the pathology 
of tuberculosis. Robertson addressed virtually all sus­
pected causes, from hereditary predisposition, to non­
specific environmental factors, to specific matter depos­
ited in the lungs, before concluding that "there is no 
concrete evidence that tuberculosis was the result of a 
specific infectious agent."
Robertson was not alone in his skepticism. At first, 
many Iowa physicians questioned Koch's tuberculosis 
bacillus. David Fairchild, writing the 1884 report on 
microscopy for the Iowa State Medical Society, observed: 
"Much interest has been excited, during this past year, 
by [this] discovery. . . . [But] we are not all as yet pre­
pared to accept Koch's bacillus theory of consumption." 
By 1887, Fairchild had changed his mind and began 
using the tuberculosis bacillus to show how pathology 
and the microscope had revolutionized medicine. The 
Iowa State Board of Health considered the case closed 
by 1889: "Never has there been such a rapid change in
public sentiment . . . since Koch . . . announced to the 
world that consumption was a communicable disease.”
Nevertheless, doctors across the state came to ac­
cept the germ theory gradually, judging each disease, 
each germ, on a case-by-case basis, weighing their own 
experience and analysis of germ cultures, and consid­
ering whether knowledge of a specific cause offered any 
change in treating a patient. In truth, the germ theory 
still had limited impact on treatment. Knowing that 
germs caused cholera, tuberculosis, and typhoid fever 
provided rationales for quarantines, but medicine of­
fered no sure-fire treatments once the diseases were 
manifest.
By the 1890s, debate on the germ theory was over. 
Scores of studies linked specific microbes to specific 
diseases, and the germ theory directly led to anti­
toxins for diphtheria, rabies, and anthrax. Nearly all 
Iowa physicians embraced the theory. Walter Bierring, 
professor of bacteriology at the State University of 
Iowa's medical department, wrote in 1895 that the pres­
ence of the tubercle bacillus was "the only reliable and 
positive criterion of tuberculosis," essentially defining 
the disease via bacteriology. David Fairchild, in his 
presidential address to the Medical Society in 1896, con­
cluded that the germ theory had advanced medical prac­
tice from uncertainty and provided "the working hy­
pothesis to make medicine a true living science.”
No one dissented. ♦>
Matt Schaefer is an archivist at the Herbert Hoover Presidential 
Library. His research on the acceptance of the germ theory in 
Iowa began with an Annals of Iowa research grant.
Family Skillets and Rubber Gloves
After 1867, when British surgeon Joseph Lister had dem­
onstrated the need for antiseptic practices to prevent in­
fection, doctors and hospitals gradually adopted the prac­
tice of sterilizing instruments, using masks, scrubbing hands, 
and, later, wearing rubber gloves. The lack of these mea­
sures had rightfully contributed to the public’s long-held 
belief that hospitals were to be avoided. It also contributed 
to the alarmingly high mortality rate among new mothers 
who contracted infections.
Despite efforts by the State Board of Health and the 
Iowa Medical Society to publicize important discoveries in 
science, some Iowa doctors and much of the public were 
slow to comprehend the deadly power of certain bacteria. 
In “ A History of Medicine in Jefferson County, Iowa,’’ James
Frederic Clarke described two troubling accounts. In the 
first instance, a physician had “ made a night call in the coun­
try and had to stay for several hours. The patient had a 
severe bronchitis and was using the family skillet for a spu­
tum dish. When time came for breakfast the good wife 
emptied the skillet and cooked in it her bacon and eggs.’’ 
Clarke also tells how in 1912 “Jefferson county sur­
geons first began to wear rubber gloves during operations. 
... The operating room nurse in the Jefferson county hos­
pital threw away one of the two pairs of rubber gloves owned 
by one of the surgeons, because they were full of holes.The 
doctor reprimanded this nurse for her wastefulness, saying: 
Those were my obstetric gloves.” ’
— The Editor
58 Iowa Heritage Illustrated


Iowa Physicians Ponder the Germ Theory

Swaim, Ginalie

Nothing Much You Can Do
Polio in Iowa
by Ginalie Swaim
H
ow is the polio scare out there? There are 7cases 
in Campustown I hear and two brothers 4 yrs 
& 2 yrs across the street from us have it, but so 
far none of the other kids around here have it. Nothing 
much you can do except watch them.”
From her home in Ames in 1949, 26-year-old Bar­
bara Burrell Nichols also shared other news with her 
relatives in that late summer letter: throwing a birth­
day party for her eight-year-old Stevie, painting the 
porch, sewing a pair of pajamas, keeping her toddler 
Gail out of mischief. Nichols's letter on Tuesday, Sep­
tember 6, mentioned all the fruit she had canned but 
not the stiff neck and headache she'd had on Monday. 
On Thursday doctors put the young mother in an iron 
lung. On Friday she died.
In Mapleton, in 1952, 11 of the 14 children in the
Thiel family fell ill with polio. Two remained paralyzed.
Polio was no stranger to Iowa. As early as 1910, 
records show 186 cases that year. After public health in­
spectors investigated 59 cases in Cerro Gordo County, 
the State Board of Health required that all cases be re­
ported, and recommended quarantine and sanitary mea­
sures.
Most often striking children, the poliomyelitis virus 
attacks nervous systems and impairs muscle groups, 
sometimes causing temporary paralysis. One percent ex­
perience paralytic polio with severe and lasting effects.
Polio reoccurred every few years in Iowa, but in 
1940, the number of cases skyrocketed to 927. The pe­
riod 1948-1950 averaged 1,300 cases yearly, peaking at 
more than 3,500 in 1952. A quarter of them were in Sioux 
City. A gamma globulin vaccine was tested on 16,500
September I 937: Walter Bier­
ring, Iowa Health Commissioner, 
and Florence Wesslund, superin­
tendent at Iowa Methodist Hos­
pital, read the directions for an 
iron lung just received.
ALL THREE PHOTOS SHSI (OES MOINES) DES MOINES REGISTER AND TRIBUNE
86 lenva Heritage Illustrated
children in Sioux City and the sur-
J
rounding Woodbury County and in 
Dakota County in Nebraska, part of 
a national trial, but the vaccine gave 
only short-term protection. Iron 
lungs were flown to Sioux City to 
assist those whose breathing 
muscles were impaired, by com­
pressing and expanding the chest, 
pushing air out and pulling it in.
With no known cure and no 
way to prevent it, polio terrified 
most Americans—but not Gladys 
Talcott Rife, a young mother and 
farm woman in eastern Iowa, who 
contracted polio in 1948. In her 
weekly newspaper column, she 
wrote appreciatively of hospital 
nurses, comically of doing house­
work on crutches, and rationally 
about the "mass hysteria" polio had 
caused in the nation. "Keep up the 
research, yes; keep up the provi­
sions for proper care, yes; but keep 
up the unreasoning fear, No!"
Hope finally eroded fear when 
the new Salk vaccine trial was tested 
successfully on 420,000 children in 
1954. A placebo was given to an­
other 200,000, and 1.2 million were 
observed. In Woodbury, Linn, and
August I 948: At the Fort Des Moines 
housing project, F. E. Black sprays gar­
bage cans for flies, in the hopes of stop­
ping the spread of polio.
September 1952: Broadlawns Hospital 
student nurse Anna Burr Getzoff applies 
a hot pack on a polio patient to help re­
lax and recondition constricted muscles, 
a treatment pioneered by an Australian 
nurse, Sister Elizabeth Kenny.
%
s
I s
t y
^  V
Jl
/A
- -- V I ■
«I
'ip-
_ _ -'. V  ̂ **
SJOSUf̂ 1“
\■■: SB! 5S * ft
A
•rar
* -,W*
>/
OlR
-V
Jtu
iV
V*
* . .  i  -• *
%s , . . I' • I
3%•
'• • %jnr. * I
rL  ^ . - '
* r • r i i*
r
-afe
»•*•
j
/I
/
/
" M  &
9yy !«
//i
. i
■MM 'V<rzr¿ts»
tei
CKr!
IK
ES
A S Vtl
'A-fs,
A
-xpV-
SM
AS
f i .
L
Njfc
.V/
SHSI (OES MOINES) DES MOINES REGISTER AND TRlBi
As 923 polio patients flooded Sioux City hospitals in I 952, the Missouri River flooded its banks, adding to public health chal­
lenges for river towns. Sandbags (above) were one way to fight the floodwaters, and vaccine clinics protected citizens from 
typhoid fever, once a major killer in Iowa. Some feared that the flood would spread polio, already raging in Sioux City.
Scott counties, 13,000 children were part of the trial. The 
next year the Salk vaccine was available to the public. 
The Sabin vaccine replaced it in 1962.
Organizations, including the March of Dimes and 
Iowa's labor unions, assisted with public information 
efforts and mass inoculations. Charles Harvey, a Des 
Moines laundry worker, recounted how Dubuque's 
"medical society decided to join hands with the osteo­
paths. So we inoculated over 7,000 people there within 
a 15-hour period, because we had enough doctors/'
The number of cases in Iowa plummeted—from 
1,445 in 1954, to 580 in 1956, then to only 78 in 1957. In 
1979, however, an outbreak occurred in four states, in­
cluding Iowa, where the Amish in Buchanan County 
had refused inoculation.
Although polio has been vanquished in the United 
States, post-polio syndrome began to appear among 
former polio patients in the 1980s. For the last two de­
cades, international efforts have focused on eradicat­
ing polio throughout the world. ❖
88 Iowa Heritage Illustrated


Nothing Much You Can Do: Polio in Iowa

Ten Public Health Achievements, 1900-1999

Mather, David

The Heart of the Best Part: Fort Des Moines No. 2 and the Archaeology of a City