Title: Alternative Sweeteners

148 Pearson
ing a solution on his hands and later eating bread at dinner. This serendipity was
duly noted in the investigators’ original report (3): ‘‘Sie schmeckt angenehm
süss, sogar süsser als der Rohrzucker.’’ (It tastes pleasantly sweet, even sweeter
than cane sugar.)
Remsen had a personal disdain for commercial ventures. However, Fahlberg,
an experienced sugar chemist, aggressively pursued the commercial potential
of the new compound. He named it ‘‘Fahlberg’s saccharin’’ and obtained a
U.S. patent (4) without informing Remsen. This professional rudeness was a
source of extreme irritation to Remsen, who summarized his feelings in 1913:
‘‘I did not want (Fahlberg’s) money, but I did feel that I ought to have received
a little credit for the discovery’’ (2).
II. EARLY PRODUCTION
Fahlberg displayed the sweetening power of saccharin in a London exposition
in 1885. This saccharin was manufactured in a pilot plant Fahlberg operated in
New York. Two German patents were issued in 1886 to Fahlberg; these were
assigned to Fahlberg, List and Company. The plant, under the name of Saccharinfabrik
A.G., was moved to Westerhusen, Germany. In 1900, Fahlberg reported
an annual production of 190,000 kg. In 1902, partly at the insistence of beet sugar
producers, saccharin production in Germany was brought under strict control, and
saccharin was attainable only through pharmacies (5).
John F. Queeny became acquainted with saccharin sometime in the late
1890s. At that time, he was the purchasing agent for Meyer Brothers Drug Company
in St. Louis, Missouri, which was importing the sweetener from Germany.
Queeny tried to persuade his employer to manufacture the sweetener rather than
import it, but Meyer Brothers did not foresee saccharin as a profitable venture
(6). In 1901, Queeny took his personal savings of $1,500 and, together with
$3,500 obtained from Liquid Carbonic, he began to manufacture saccharin himself.
He chose his wife’s maiden name in naming his new venture the Monsanto
Chemical Company.
Early production of saccharin was a touch-and-go proposition with rickety
old equipment. Furthermore, saccharin was targeted by several antagonists, the
most aggressive of which was the German cartel known as the Dye Trust. The
Dye Trust waged a price war and cut the price from $4.50 a pound to $1.00 a
pound (6).
Opposition to saccharin also arose from domestic sources. A prominent
food editor of the time, Alfred W. McCann, wrote, ‘‘Saccharin is as false and
scarlet as the glow of health transferred from the rouge pot to the cheek of a
baud’’ (6). Saccharin was also criticized for having no food value or calories,
the very characteristic that distinguished it from sugar. Saccharin remained ap-