Letters Received to Dr. Haven Emerson, November 15, 1927

COPY HARVARD UNIVERSITY SCHOOL OF PUBLIC HEALTH Nov. 15,1927. Dear Dr. Emerson: I have hesitated a long time before writing you this letter and yet I believe that in your place I should want someone to write it to me. At any rate, if I am mistaken, there is no need that it should go any farther, that anyone but you should ever know it has been written. To plunge at once into the subject. I am most puzzled about Dr. Flinn and his relation to the radium poisoning which took place in the plant of the United States Radium Corporation in Orange, New Jersey. My connection with these occurrences has been indirect only, but I have followed all that has happened with deep interest and inasmuch as most of the investigation was done by the Drinkers, with Dr. Castle, I have heard of that aspect from them. The details of the cases, and the efforts of the non-fatal ones to obtain compensation, have been given me by the Consumers League, which has been connected with the situation since the first. Dr. Flinn was, I believe, first brought into the situation by the Consumers' League, and by my advice, for he was much nearer the scene than anyone else I could suggest. You doubtless know of his paper in which he dismissed the conclusions of the Drinkers and of Martland and stated that the affection could not have been radiun necrosis, since a study of similar plants had failed to reveal any cases of such disease. The next thing I heard of his part in the situation was from the lawyer who has taken up the girls suits and who told me that Dr. Flinn is employed by the U.S. Radium Corporation to examine the girls who complain of effects of the radium and that he assures them they are mistaken as to the cause of their illness. He also represented the Corporation at an autopsy held recently on one of the victims. He is not, I am told, a graduate in medicine. What makes his actions more puzzling is a paper which he published in "Laryngoscope" in May of this year, in which he describes two cases of "radium poisoning" occuring in girls employed in a plant in Connecticut, with the classic symptoms of bone necrosis and apalastic anemia. These cases, of course, upset his theory that the New Jersey cases must have been due, not to radiations but to a "low-grade infection", for that theory rested on the absence of any such disease in other plants. This he practically acknowledges in the article, in fact the very title acknowledges it. I may say in passing that Dr. Flinn abstains from mentioning the work of any others in this field. The impression gained from the paper is that he alone studied the New Jersey cases. Yesterday two young lawyers, who represent five of the surviving New Jersey victims -- the number of fatalities is now ten, we are told came here to take evidence from Drs. Drinker and Castle. According to them, Dr. Flinn still represents the Corporation and is to be their expert in the hearings on these cases. This, in spite of his article in Laryngoscope. It seems to me an attitude impossible to understand and I wonder if you can explain it. We are all unwilling to condemn him, yet you can see how the matter of his conduct looks to us. I have written this letter myself because I want it to be only between you and myself. None of the others know I am writing to you and I will ask you to keep it confidential, except of course, from Dr. Flinn. You are entirely at liberty to show it to him if you think best. I should be very glad if be could clear up for us all this very obscure situation. Very sincerely yours, (signed) Alice Hamilton.