Originally published at: In the 1920s, painters of luminous watch dials began to fall mysteriously ill | Boing Boing
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The light was messing with their circadian rhythms? All I can think of.
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And spawned the idea for one of my absolute favorite novelettes of the last few years, The Only Harmless Great Thing, by Brooke Bolander.
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I thought I heard they had been told to lick the tips of the brushes to keep them pointed, but I could be mistaken. I took no effort to confirm this before posting.
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spoiler - they were getting cancer from the radioactive radium.
they used to lick the brushes to get a finer point, thus better painting
led to the term “Radium Jaw” when the jawbone would develop necrosis due to radium exposure…
I havent listened to the podcast because - no time. - but there is plenty of history out there about it.
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PSA: do not Google the story of the sportsman dandy who was their spokesman and took it regularly. Don’t. It’s gruesome, I’m not being facetious.
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The July 7, 1952 issue of Life magazine ran a piece on a uranium mine in Montana which had converted itself into a wellness center. Word spread that sitting in the mine breathing radon gas cured arthritis and other crippling conditions. People started showing up offering money to be allowed to sit in the mine. The owners knew a good thing. They closed down mining operations, installed a waiting room and elevator, and re-opened as a health operation, accepting money on a “donation basis.”
Among the photos is one captioned, “Watched by daughter, a St. Paul woman lies by bags of uranium ore, used to increase radon gas in mine.” At the time of writing some 5000 people had been swindled–I mean, served–by the mine. Though “medical officials” said the mine proved “Barnum was right,” most customers swore by, rather than at, the radon treatment. Two interesting sidelights:
One, the mine was named the Free Enterprise. No lie.
Two, the Free Enterprise is still in business as a “Radon Health Mine.” (I choose not to link to their website.) In best post-Truth tradition, a panel at the bottom says “DO YOUR RESEARCH! Learn about the science of Radon Therapy.”
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I read the book “Radium Girls”; what a horrible disease. Radium jaw was a cousin of the Victorian ailment phossy jaw, contracted by workers in match factories.
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By coincidence, I just finished Bill Bryson’s fascinating book, The Body. He describes what happened to that individual (I won’t mention his name). Gruesome indeed.
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The book was also made into a movie. It was mostly factual, but there were some divergences for the purposes of cinema.
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Oh, I have just started reading it!
(No worries, ‘radiation sickness is bad’ isn’t exactly a spoiler.)
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On a scale of hydroxychloroquine through ivermectin and to betadine iodine solutions where does radium fall for covid treatment? /s
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Flat.
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Still better than plutonium, ricin, cyanide and the extremely dense matter of a neutron star. The only question is: which one will Alex Jones latch onto next?
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