Ironically, “fraudulent” companies were being shut down at the time for selling harmless products claiming to contain radium!ĭrifting back a little further through human history to the 1600’s you most likely know about the concept of “Blue-bloods”. “The Radium Water Worked Fine until His Jaw Came Off” After his death, The Wall Street Journal ran one of its biggest headlines of the decade, telling the story in a single line… That was the year that things went downhill in a hurry for Byers who was found to be riddled with cancer. Not one to do anything halfway, Eban Byers is estimated to have consumed about 1400 bottles of the “remedy” by 1930. The Bailey Radium Laboratories of East Orange, New Jersey, offered $1,000 to anyone who could prove that its “Certified Radioactive Water,” sold under the brand name Radithor, did not contain the large amount of radium and thorium it claimed to. Without enough scientific evidence on either side radium riddled products were big business– The higher the concentration, the better. It was 1927 and the debate about what actually constituted “medicine” was as frothy as it is today. At age 47, he’d suffered an injury on the return trip from his annual Yale-Harvard alumna football game when he fell from his train berth. Along with his good looks, the win made him a minor celebrity.īyers was, by most accounts, a healthy and vigorous guy when he visited his Ivy League-educated physician for ongoing pain in his arm. Eben Byers was a Yale-educated athlete who won the US Amateur Golf Championship at age 26. It wasn’t careful use of the scientific process or triple-blind testing that put the fangs into the FDA’s argument either, it was actually a case of a mutilated socialite. In the early 1900’s Banning Radium Infused Products was actually one of the first campaigns for the newly formed FDA. Would it surprise you to know that someone holding a spot in your not-so-distant family tree more than likely bought and consumed a bottle or two of this? History’s Deadliest Beauty Tricks! The Horrible History of Beauty
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