Historical Anecdote Related to Chemical Tests For Intoxication

Published: Journal of Analytical Toxicology, Volume 20, Number 3, May/June 1996, pp. 207-208.

Historical Anecdote Related to Chemical Tests For Intoxication
R. Andreásson and A.W. Jones

To the Editor:
During the preparation of an article dealing with the life and work of Erik M.P. Widmark (1), we were given access to his original documents, various letters and correspondence, and reprints of his scientific papers. This was made possible through the kindness and cooperation of Mrs. Daisy Widmark, wife of the late Dr. Per-Erik Widmark, E.M.P. Widmark’s son. We report here a historical event gleaned from correspondence dated from 1931–1932 between the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Prohibition and Professor Erik M.P. Widmark that concerns tests for drunkenness based on chemical analysis of blood.

The U.S. Department of Justice was disturbed about the increasing involvement of alcohol in traffic accidents and the problems associated with gathering tangible evidence for prosecuting drunken drivers. The head of the research division, Mr. E.P. Sanford, contacted Dr. Walter R. Miles of the Institute of Human Relations, Yale University, to discuss the problem of “driving under the influence of liquor” and the role of alcohol in traffic accidents. Miles was considered the leading authority in the United States on the subject of alcohol-induced impairment of body functions. His classic book, Alcohol and Human Efficiency, which was published by the Carnegie Institution of Washington in 1924, is still interesting reading.

In his letter of response, Dr. Miles recommended that the Department of Justice contact Professor Erik Widmark at the University of Lund in Sweden, adding, “I believe it is in Dr. Widmark’s laboratory where they are at present analyzing blood samples secured in connection with automobile accidents in Sweden. Widmark has developed what is known as a micromethod, so that sufficient blood can be secured from a needle prick to serve as sample for analysis.” Accordingly, the chief of the research division at the Department of Justice, Bureau of Prohibition wrote to Widmark and, in a letter dated July 22, 1931, mentioned the problem of testing for drunkenness: “Such tests in our various states vary from smelling the offenders breath to making him walk a chalk line, but no scientific test apparently is applied.” The letter from the Department of Justice continued: “We are particularly anxious to know what the alcoholic content of the blood must be before a person can be described as being under the influence of alcohol. Some median line must have been established on one side of which an offender is not under the influence of liquor and on the other side of which he may be said to be intoxicated. Just what that line is we should like to know.”

Obviously, Widmark could not provide an unequivocal answer to this question, although in his reply dated August 7, 1931, he included reprints of several articles and information about the Swedish system of blood-alcohol testing for law enforcement purposes. Widmark also included an original manuscript, which he requested be sent for publication to the Journal of the American Medical Association. This manuscript was entitled “The Swedish System for Medico-Forensic Determination of the Alcohol Content of the Blood. 1. The Theoretical Basis.” The manuscript was submitted to the Journal on August 27, 1931, by the Department of Justice. However, in a response from the editors dated September 21, 1931, the paper was rejected with the following comment: “The technical character of this manuscript would seem to make it better suited to one of the special publications in the field of laboratory medicine than to a journal of general circulation, such as ours.” The editors also mentioned an acute shortage of space in the journal at that time and that practically everything that was sent for publication was returned. E.M.P. Widmark therefore joins the ranks of other famous scientists such as Sir Hans Krebs and Rosalind Yalow, both winners of the Nobel Prize, in having an important paper rejected by a scientific journal. The paper by Krebs described the biochemistry of the citric acid cycle and was rejected by the journal Nature; Yalow’s paper on radioimmunoassay was rejected by the Journal of Clinical Investigation (2).

Widmark was informed of the editors’ decision, and the manuscript was apparently never published: this is the only known example of Widmark’s work being rejected by a scientific journal. Unfortunately, we have been unable to find this manuscript among Widmark’s remaining papers. Nevertheless, the Department of Justice was interested in Widmark’s article and made copies of it for its own purposes. In some later correspondence, Widmark sent the Department of Justice a copy of his classic German monograph that had just been published, “Die theoretischen Grundlagen und die praktische Verwendbarkeit der gerichtlich-medizinischen Alkoholbestimmung. Urban und Schwarzenberg, Berlin, 1932” (Principles and practical application of medicolegal alcohol determinations, translation prepared by Biomedical Publications, Davis, CA, 1981).
In some later correspondence, Widmark was asked to furnish the names and addresses of people who were experienced with his micromethod of blood analysis for use in traffic law enforcement. In a letter dated June 2, 1932, Widmark sent a list of 20 scientists from seven European countries who had visited his laboratory to gain first-hand practical experience with the microdiffusion method of blood-alcohol analysis. These visitors included many leading scientists from Germany including, among others, Dr. Kurt Hoffmann and Dr. G. Jungmichel. Experts in forensic and legal medicine from Austria, Holland, Denmark, Norway, Finland, and Iceland were instructed in the use of Widmark’s method of blood-alcohol analysis. In the 1930s, at least seven cities in Germany were using Widmark’s micromethod of blood analysis for legal purposes to furnish evidence of intoxication for the prosecution of drunk drivers.

It is interesting to speculate what might have happened in the United States regarding subsequent development and implementation of evidence of intoxication based on chemical analysis of body materials if Widmark’s article, which was evidently going to be the first in a series of articles, had been published by the Journal of the American Medical Association. Widmark’s method for obtaining, preserving, and transporting small volumes of blood was highly practical for use in the field, and there was no risk of any medical complications. If this method of blood sampling had been thoroughly evaluated by law enforcement organizations, the focus and subsequent development of chemical tests for intoxication in the United States might have taken a different course. As it happened, devices for breath-alcohol analysis appeared during the 1940s: the Drunkometer, the Intoximeter, and the Alcometer. The main thrust of later developments focused on measuring breath alcohol as opposed to blood alcohol for law enforcement purposes, and the invention of the Breathalyzer by Dr. R.F. Borkenstein in the early 1950s had a major influence on future developments in methods of forensic alcohol analysis. In European countries, however, blood and urine specimens were the body fluids of choice when the first statutory alcohol limits for driving were enacted; it took another 50 years before evidential breath-alcohol instruments were considered equivalent to blood tests as evidence of impairment. In retrospect, there is little doubt that during the 1930s the results of blood-alcohol analysis obtained according to Widmark’s micromethod were considerably more accurate and precise when compared with estimating a person’s blood-alcohol concentration indirectly by analyzing a specimen of breath.

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