Sumner Simpson to Vandiver Brown on Gardner's Early Results and the Harvard Sample (1937)

A one-page letter of September 27, 1937, from Sumner Simpson, president of Raybestos-Manhattan, to Vandiver Brown, Johns-Manville's general attorney. Simpson enclosed a letter from Dr. Chas. E. Hyde, physician for DuPont's Fairfield factory, and his reply to Dr. Gardner. He had seen Dr. Leroy Gardner at Lake Placid that summer: it was too early to tell anything definite, "but he does think the outlook is somewhat promising." Gardner had also mentioned that an asbestos sample from the Harvard College Laboratory "upon injection caused immediate death of the animals," and Simpson had asked him to find out where it came from.

In Johns-Manville's index

Johns-Manville's legal department indexed the Motley 1,000 in 1984. Its index describes this document as follows:

S. Simpson letter to V. Brown, 9/27/37, stating that Dr. Gardner is very interested in the results of his experiments. Although it is too early to tell anything definite, Dr. Gardner thinks that "the outlook is somewhat promising." Simpson reports on a "strange" incident that happened to Dr. Gardner. When Dr. Gardner injected a sample of asbestos from Harvard College Laboratory into lab animals, it caused immediate death. Dr. Gardner is investigating the cause of this. He suspects there was something wrong with the sample.

Related documents

• Vandiver Brown to Sumner Simpson on the Harvard Asbestos Sample That Killed Gardner's Animals (1937)

About this copy

This is document 217 of the Motley 1,000, from the set the Manville Personal Injury Settlement Trust's records facility certified as true copies, pages CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-001306 to CRMC-Motley1000-Subj-001306.