Radium Medicine Is Condemned (Jan, 1933)
Radium Medicine Is Condemned
AN AUTHORITATIVE statement of the probable uselessness and even more probable dangers of drinking radioactive waters or taking other medicines supposed to contain radium has been issued by the American Medical Association. Evidence of helpfulness of water is not available.
See also “The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off”, the story of the end of one Eben McBurney Byers’ life:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Byers
http://www.time.com/time/magaz.....25,00.html
Most “radium” patent medicines were, like most of the “electric” cure-alls that preceded them, totally fraudulent or at least largely inert, and thus just placebos.
Water treated with “radium ore”, however, was unfortunately very often exactly what it was advertised to be. Radioactive-jug devices like the “Revigator” can still be quite hazardously “hot” today!
http://periodictable.com/Items/088.6/index.html
The thing that blows my mind is that you can STILL buy radioactive “curatives”, if you’re dumb enough:
http://dansdata.blogsome.com/2.....-quackery/
Comment by Daniel Rutter — July 26, 2010 @ 2:35 am
The Museum of Science and Energy in Oak Ridge used to have a display of pots that held a block of radium at the bottom. You filled it with water and drank a glass from it every day.
Comment by TomB — July 26, 2010 @ 7:47 am
Popular Science did an article a year earlier:
July 1932 Popular Science Page 9:
http://books.google.com/books?.....CBIQ6AEwAA
PS: I’d hardly call it a ‘life-giving element. It cures by KILLING cancer cells.
Comment by jayessell — July 26, 2010 @ 11:08 am
When I lived in Minneapolis my apartment building was right across the river from The Museum of Questionable Medical Devices. They had radium water dispensers (http://www.museumofquackery.com/devices/revig.htm) and red fiestaware (which contains uranium oxide). It was a great museum. I was sad to see that the founder of the museum recently died.
Comment by Charlie — July 26, 2010 @ 1:49 pm
When I was about 3 years old (1955), I had a small “blood tumor” on the tip of my nose. Doctors applied radium to my nose about a dozen times. I suppose the idea was to shrink the tumor. The treatments left an endentation on my nose from the tip to the middle of my eyes. Recently, 2007, I had a large basel cell carcenoma cancer. The removed about half of my nose to get to all the cancer. The doctors said it was from my experience with the radium. It also, about the same time, caused me to not make saliva and I have no gag reflex.
Let’s hear it for medical research on children in the U.S.
Comment by Tim — August 2, 2010 @ 2:09 pm
They not only drank it, but bathed in it too.
http://geoheat.oit.edu/bulletin/bull23-4/art13.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R.....s,_Georgia
This will give you a rough idea of how much of a radiation dose you’d get by bathing in one of the places. It’s not directly proportional as different sources of radiation have different effects.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B.....alent_dose
Comment by Arglebarglefarglegleep — August 6, 2010 @ 2:25 pm