Prescription for Death

Abstract

In 1924, students at the Ohio State University (OSU) College of Pharmacy were assigned to work at the Pharmacy Dispensary at the University’s Student Health Service. Dr. H. Shindle Wingert, director of the Service, routinely prescribed “R&Ws”—five grains of aspirin, put up in red capsules, and two grains of quinine, put up in white capsules—for students complaining of colds, fever, and minor muscle pain. In January 1925, six students became ill after receiving prescriptions for R & Ws. Two of the students, Charles Huls and David Puskin, died. The diagnosis was strychnine poisoning. An investigation found no strychnine in the capsules at the dispensary and assumed that poisoned capsules had been added to the stock jar of R & Ws. The dispensary did not have a licensed pharmacist on duty during all hours of its operation as required by Ohio law. A strict college policy limited access to strychnine. OSU’s student newspaper, the Lantern, speculated that the “poison capsules case” might never be solved. This article returns to the famous OSU poisoning case and uses new archival evidence to closely reexamine the motives of the actors most implicated in the tragedy.