Eleven Blue Men, and Other Narratives of Medical Detection is a collection of twelve true short stories written by Berton Roueché and published in 1953.

[3] It was originally published in The New Yorker in 1947[3] and was also included in Roueché's later collection of short stories The Medical Detectives.

[5][6] A man collapses in a Manhattan street and is taken to a doctor; he has abdominal cramping, retching, confusion and an alarming bluish hue to the skin.

The doctor is understandably confused, and at first diagnoses carbon monoxide poisoning, which is known to cause cyanosis (a blue colour to the extremities due to oxygen deprivation).

They meet someone from the Bureau of Food and Drugs, who finds multiple violations of the health code in the cafeteria — it is infested with vermin and has open sewage lines, amongst other things.

The cereal is a generic brand and the water is municipal; these are ruled out as sources of the poison, as more people would be sick if this were the case.

However, the doctors hypothesize that since the men were all heavy drinkers and heavy drinkers often have low levels of salt in their blood, these men may have added developed a strong craving for salt, leading them to consume enough enough from the nitrite-filled shaker to make a fatal dose.

[7] The book was widely praised by critics for being accessible to general public without compromising on the integrity of the medical work presented.

[10] Eleven Blue Men, and Other Narratives of Medical Detection is one of the top ten favourite books of author Kaye Gibbons.

[11] Eleven Blue Men was required reading for many years for those training at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Epidemic Intelligence Service.