A Sweet Baltimore Discovery at Johns Hopkins University (1879)

  In 1877, the H.W. Perot Import Firm, largest supplier of sugar in Baltimore at the time, had a large shipment impounded by the U.S. Government, which questioned its purity. The company hired Constantin Fahlberg (born in Tambov, Russia in 1850), an expert on sugar, to run tests and requested Johns Hopkins University Professor Ira Remsen (born in Harlem, NY in 1846) for use of the chemistry lab he managed.  H.W. Perot also hired Remsen, asking him to provide a laboratory for Fahlberg’s tests.

Constantin Fahlberg

  Dr. Ira Remsen founded the nation’s first journal of chemical research, and is considered the father of American chemistry. According to the book, "Sweet and low: A Family Story” by Rich Cohen, he had began tinkering with sulfobenzoic acids as a student in Germany eventually publishing 75 papers on these and related compounds, work that would be the research basis for what was to come – “saccharin”.

Ira Remsen,
Johns Hopkins Professor
and President

  In 1878, he became the second president of Johns Hopkins University and was less directly involved with the lab.  One day in June 1878, Professor Remsen suggested to his colleague, Fahlberg, that he experiment on testing substitution products of coal tar.  He had become so intensely interested and eventually forgot about supper until it was quite late, and then rushed off for a meal without stopping to wash his hands.

  Fahlberg sat down to dinner, picked up a roll with his hand and bit into a remarkably sweet crust – the result of having spilled an experimental compound over his hands from earlier that day. Realizing that it had to have come from the laboratory, according to his statement in a Baltimore Sun article he rushed back to it and “proceeded to taste the contents of every beaker and evaporating dish on the lab table.  Luckily for me, none contained any corrosive or poisonous liquid.”  Finally, he found the source:  an overboiled beaker in which sulfobenzoic acid had reacted to ultimately produce benzoic sulfinide which, to the taste, outsugared sugar.

Seal of the Fahlberg, List & Co.

  Remsen and Fahlberg jointly published an article describing the method of saccharin synthesis in February 1879, though initially neither discoverer seemed interested in its commercial use.  That would change in 1884 when, after Falhberg left Remsen’s lab and without notifying his co-discoverer, he applied for a German patent (which later transferred to an American patent) on a new method for cheaply producing greater quantities. By 1886, it was introduced to the public through a company he started the world’s first saccharin factory known as the Fahlberg, List & Co.

Chandler's Saccharin Pellets

  He then likewise quickly returned to the U.S. and set up shop in New York City, where he opened America’s first factory. Patent medicine companies like Chandler’s Distributors of St. Louis, MO, distributed saccharin in the United States as early as 1888 (see photo, left).  “Don’t Miss Your Sugar” was advertising headline.
  

 "Concentrated sweetness in handy form.  One pellet equals one teaspoon of sugar. Dissolves instantly – No bitter after-taste; which is experienced from the user of cheaper, inferior brands. Prescribed by doctors for persons unable to use sugar, also for reducing purposes.  A non-fattening, non-nutritive sweetening agent."

  By 1901, Monsanto was founded by John Francis Queeny, a 30-year veteran of the pharmaceutical industry, who gave the company his wife’s maiden name.  Oddly enough, the company’s first product was saccharin (in 1902) despite his father-in-law being a wealthy financier of a sugar company based in St. Thomas - this became the first commercial production of saccharin in the United States.   During the periods 1903 to 1905, Monsanto’s entire saccharin output was shipped (and later sold) to the growing soft drink company in Georgia, called Coca-Cola.  Its use became widespread especially during World War I due to sugar shortages.

Monsanto-brand Saccharin

  As early as 1907, the USDA investigated saccharin for being contradictory to the Pure Food and Drug Act, which had been enacted during President Theodore Roosevelt’s administration.  Teddy Roosevelt (being a consumer of saccharin) opposed the investigation and was stated saying, “Anyone who says saccharin is injurious to health is an idiot” when people questioned its use as a sweetener.  By 1917, the U.S. government filed suit over the safety of saccharin. 

  The safety of this now world-famous Baltimore-based discovery has been studied and written in volumes of literature and research.  Interestingly enough, it was one of the co-founders himself (Ira Remsen was the Johns Hopkins University acting president) who was quoted by the Baltimore Sun as he lectured before the Public School Teacher’s Association on an evening in February 1890, “It may interest you to learn that saccharin was discovered about ten years ago in the chemical laboratory of the Johns Hopkins University, and that it is now manufactured on the large scale in Germany.  It is an open question whether its side effects upon the system are injurious or not.” 

Remsen Hall, Johns Hopkins
(Courtesy: JHU)

  Although it was possibly stated with vengeance over not being credited for its discovery within patent or public venues, perhaps this forewarning by the true co-inventor might be the best input in determining your own opinion about its safeness

  Here in Baltimore, after his death in 1927, Dr. Ira Remsen’s ashes were placed behind a plaque in Remsen Hall on the Homewood Campus of saccharin’s discovery location at Johns Hopkins University.  Dr. Constantine Fahlberg died in Aug 1910 and is buried at Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, Russia.

(Other Sources for this blogpost courtesy of: Chemical Heritage Magazine, Wikipedia, and Baltimore Sun articles)