Medicine: Problem Drinkers

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A bunch of the boys from Judd & Detweiler, a Washington printing firm, decided to get together one weekend last fall for an oyster roast. They scarcely had their schooners of beer operating before, one after another, they broke out in splotches and began to feel palpitation and extreme drowsiness. Comparing notes, they discovered that they had all experienced the symptoms before when drinking. Word got around the plant, and 58 other sufferers stepped forward. Together they petitioned management to explain why they were unable to take alcohol.

Management turned the problem over to Washington Internist Dr. William Lewis. Recruiting four printers from the color presses and one from the black-and-white presses, Dr. Lewis took samples of their blood and urine, sent them around the corner for a quick snort. When they came back, only the color-press printers had developed the characteristic symptoms. Dr. Lewis concentrated his studies on the color-press room, learned by interviewing the 240 men who worked there that the symptoms were most marked in the winter, when the heat was on and the windows closed. After more tests with two of the most persistent sufferers, Printers Angelo Puglisi and William Grimes, Dr. Lewis consulted Skin Specialist Dr. Louis Schwartz, concluded that the reaction was similar to the reaction of drinkers to Antabuse, the anti-alcoholism drug which produces nausea and other physical disorders (TIME, Oct. 29, 1951). Then he learned that the company had recently doubled the amount of antiscum compound used in its color inks. Over at the ink-manufacturing plant he found that weekend drinkers were suffering the same ill effects. Dr. Lewis shut up Volunteers Puglisi and Grimes with a basin of antiscum compound, set them to playing cards and later to drinking whisky. They emerged splotched, red-eyed and drowsy. That cleared up the mystery. Like Antabuse, the antiscum compound (butanal oxime) was interfering with the complete oxidation of alcohol in the body, thus increasing the acetaldehyde content of the blood.

Judd & Detweiler switched to another antiscum compound. The boys started hoisting them again. Said happy Printer Puglisi last week: "Nobody's sick around here any more."