At the beginning of the 20th century, Marie Curie made remarkable advancements in science. She discovered Radium which is a highly radioactive element. But this element was difficult to obtain because it was scarce. The most abundant locations are Austria and Cornwall, England. This led the government to establish mines that would extract the element only when needed for research. This also led Britain to establish the British Radium Corporation, this corporation supplied hospitals with Radium for curing a variety of diseases and ailments. This also began the race to see who can use Radium to cure cancer. Hospitals established this “apparatus” which was basically a water dispenser that had doses of Radium dissolved in its water. You were only allowed to drink 1oz a day. This 1oz had 37 billion Bq radioactivity, which means one-fourth nucleus decay per second. The toxicity for everyday drinkers is so high they had to be buried in lead coffins because the same amount of radium on their bones the day they died is still present to this day. This water dispenser supposedly cured your gout, rheumatism, arthritis, neuralgia, sciatica, diabetes and so much more.

 It did not stop there, radium was used as a beauty product. “Caradium” is what they called their radioactive hair dye. This wasn’t any normal hair dye, this dye made you look 10-20 years younger by restoring your color from the roots. They had radioactive water in spas to promote a more relaxing and enjoyable time. They advertised it as “here’s health!” It was in paint for some reason and the girls who worked in the factories creating the paint would lick the brush to give them a fine point ingesting some of that material. Later it was found to give them bone cancer, it didn’t cure cancer like they thought it would. One of the main concerns was that thieves were trying to get their hands on it. This stuff was EXPENSIVE. For one GRAM it costs about 100,000 dollars. Ingesting Radium had horrible side effects. It caused holes to form in the cranium, it caused bone necrosis, stomach ulcerations, and teeth to fall out. When autopsied some people’s bone tissue was literally melting off. The factory was shut down in 1921. 

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