How awful is this ? I had never realized radiation had been so misunderstood back then...
You might be interested in http://www.academia.edu/3586500/Half-Lives_The_Rise_and_Fall... , which writes that
> Prescribed Radithor by his doctor in 1928, Byers was dead by 1932 (aged 51), with his autopsy revealing that he had consumed approximately 1,400 bottles in afew short years — at least one every day. Radithor was a radium drinking solution promoted by one Dr. William Bailey (a fake name) whose products did in fact contain significant amounts of the element. The recognition that rich patients — and not just female industrial dial painters — were dying because of these products led “the federal government to act with far greater alacrity to help consumers than to assist workers.”
The comment about the jaw coming off reminds me of a story about phosphorus as a tonic:
> [I]n 1931 a Dr. G. Coltart wrote to the Lancet about an interesting case. A patient of his had come to him in 1904 complaining of feeling run down and so the doctor had prescribed a popular brand of tonic pills that contained both elemental phosphorous and strychnine but told the patient to stop taking them if the strychnine made him twitch. The patient had returned twenty-seven years later with an advanced case of phossy jw, the industrial disease that afflicted those in the match-making industrys, having taken the pills regularly during the intervening years. Asked why he had taken the pills for so long, he replied that he continued with them because they had never caused him to twitch! ("The Shocking History of Phosphorous", John Emsley, p. 58.)
The comment about the FDA reminds me of the 1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide tragedy. As the WSJ article points out, the FDA only had the power to regulate adulterants or false advertising. They only had the authority to track down the toxic Elixir Sulfanilamide because it, technically speaking, was not an elixir. Hence why they couldn't control the sales of radium water which truly did contain radium.
(With free market beliefs, the idea was that the customer should decide, not the government.)
And the speculation about the possible stimulative effect echos the 1925 publication in JAMA by Martland, et al.,at http://jama.jamanetwork.com/article.aspx?articleid=238584 :
> Minute particles of the radioactive substances ... produce, for a period of time, seemingly curative or stimulative reactions, to be followed later by exhaustion and destruction of the blood producing centers.
Without the ability to measure things, I think you made the safer choice.
One would also help in checking for radioactive glaze used on Fiestaware plates.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiesta_(dinnerware)#Radioactive...