Radithor
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Radithor was a radioactive agent selected from triply distilled water was, in which the radium - isotopes 226 Ra and 228 were dissolved Ra ( "mesothorium I"), so that a type of at least one microcurie disposal.
The remedy was manufactured after the First World War until 1931 by the Bailey Radium Laboratories, Inc. (from 192? In East Orange , New Jersey ) under the direction of William John Bailey and among other things as "Cure for the living dead" and "Eternal sunshine" designated and wooed. According to the manufacturer, Radithor should have a healing effect on numerous diseases and the ionizing radiation miraculously supplies the human body with new energy from within. Despite the relatively high price, Radithor quickly became popular, especially among financially strong sections of the population, due to its courted aura , so that the company sold its product over 400,000 times in small bottles as “certified radium water” within five years. Doctors who prescribed Radithor received a 17% discount. Similar products were offered and traded in other countries. There were even concentrates from which you could make your own radium water with the help of special preparations.
It was only when the prominent American athlete Eben Byers , who claims to have consumed around 1,400 bottles of Radithor as medicine on the recommendation of his doctor, became seriously ill with cancer , numerous teeth and large parts of his lower jaw fell out, and a little later he had large ones Qualen died, strong doubts arose in 1932 about the healing properties of radithor and radium waters. Public opinion turned in the United States . However, Radithor no longer needed to be taken off the market because of the radiation damage , as the company Bailey Radium Laboratories had already stopped production a year earlier in connection with the first press reports about Eben Byers' illness.
literature
- Bailey Radium Laboratories (Ed.): Radithor, the Modern Weapon of Medical Science. A Complete Treatise on Internal Radioactive Therapy. East Orange, NJ, 1928, OCLC 44703901 .
Web links
- Radium water ( Memento from January 14, 2013 in the Internet Archive )
- Radium - history
Individual evidence
- ↑ Radithor (approx. 1928) . Oak Ridge Associated Universitaet, February 17, 2009, accessed January 13, 2016.
- ^ Frank Patalong: The Victorian vibrator: foolish to deadly inventions from the age of technology . BASTEI LÜBBE, 2012, ISBN 978-3-8387-2181-1 ( limited preview in Google book search).
- ^ Ron Winslow: The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off . In: The Wall Street Journal . August 1, 1990, p. A1 ( Reprint in NEWSLETTER NO. 20 , Medical Collectors Association, November 1991 [PDF; accessed January 13, 2016]). Reprint ( Memento of the original from December 9, 2017 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
