News & Updates

“A Whiskey Bottle, Hamilton College, The Pure Food and Drug Act, and Hollywood”

By Kristin Strohmeyer

January 23, 2015

Please join us Friday, January 30 at noon in the Burke Library All Night Reading Room for a Humanities Brown Bag lunch with David Gapp (Silas D. Childs Professor of Biology)

Dave’s chance finding of an old brown bottle sent him to the web to find out what he could about “Duffy’s Pure Malt Whiskey”, patent date 1879.  As he scanned through several articles, “Hamilton College” appeared seemingly out of context.  Was the link to this whiskey referring to riotous actions of the Hamilton men at the turn of the century?  No. It was reference to Hamilton alum, Samuel Hopkins Adams, Class of 1891, a muckraker journalist who is given credit for stimulating passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act of 1906.  While Adams was prominent in starting the demise of the patent medicine business, he was also a very productive story writer and novelist whose books would be made in to movies.  Dave’s talk will trace his journey of discovery from the bottle to the literature and films of Samuel Hopkins Adams.

Please join us - lunch will be served!