Take a little time to watch the history of Radithor, a presentation by [Adam Blumenberg] into a quack medicine that was exactly what it said on the label: distilled water containing around 2 micrograms of radium in each bottle (yes, that’s a lot.) It’s fascinatingly well-researched, and goes into the technology and societal environment surrounding such a product, which helped play a starring role in the eventual Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act of 1938. You can watch the whole presentation in the video, embedded below the break.
If you happen to come across a bottle, perhaps in an antique shop, maybe don’t buy it.
Radium was discovered in 1898 by Marie and Pierre Curie, and despite the deeply saddening case of the Radium Girls (part of humanity’s history with radiation) being settled unhappily in 1928, it took the horrifying death of Eben M. Byers — a wealthy and famous golfer — in 1932 for radium’s dangers to take center stage.
Radium is actually a very interesting substance, best admired from outside of the body. If ingested, due to its chemical structure the human body treats it like calcium and dutifully deposits it into bones. The body then proceeds to have a bad time.
Eben Byers had been drinking Radithor for years before he ultimately died of radium poisoning. At the time of his death, the wealthy Eben Byers was estimated to have consumed some 1,400 bottles. In the hospital near the end of his life, one record states that the very air he exhaled was found to be radioactive. His jaw was literally ..
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