Atomic cocktail

For most patients, the old-fashioned basal metabolism test is a mild form of torture . . . and four Navy researchers have come to the conclusion that in big medical centers with facilities for handling radioisotopes it should be replaced by the "atomic cocktail."

Lilienthal's speech to the scientists at G.E. revelled in possibilities for atomic measurement and medicine, especially how a man dying of a huge throat tumor was treated with an atomic cocktail, causing the tumor to disappear completely in a matter of days.

The test showed excessive hormone, so the doctor prescribed an “atomic cocktail,” a radioactive iodine mixture designed to partially kill the thyroid gland.

I was at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles for a radioactive iodine scan, this one at diagnostic levels—less radiation than the therapeutic levels I would eventually endure. I drank my first atomic cocktail: a vial of liquid radioactive iodine diluted in what seemed like gallons of water.

Its most famous drink is the atomic cocktail—vodka, brandy, Champagne, splash of sherry.