Radium

Radium is formed by the breaking up of atoms of another element called uranium, but radium shows this breaking up process in its own atoms more distinctly than does uranium or any other element we know, and it is this breaking up that gives radium its astonishing properties such as the production of heat, electricity, and wave motions in the ether which are similar to the wave motions which produce the sensation of light to our eyes.

As for myself, I had to devote again a great deal of time to the preparation of several decigrammes of very pure radium chloride. With this I achieved, in 1907, a new determination of the atomic weight of radium, and in 1910 I was able to isolate the metal.

Of the total, fifteen cases were treated surgically, seventeen by radium, one by a combination of the two methods, three by radium and X-ray, one by the Percy cautery, two by the cautery, and two by the cautery preceding the application of radium.

As soon as it had been shown that skin burns could be caused by radium, medical men began to experiment in order to find out if malignant growths of the skin could be destroyed by the same agency. [...] Immense strides have been made in the technique of applying the radium to kill cancers.

Well, remember how the children of the State Orphanage became mysteriously ill? The doctors diagnosed it as radium poisoning, but how it happened was a first class mystery to them. There's no radium factory within miles of the orphanage.

The U.S. radium dial painters of the 1920s comprised an early cohort of several thousand workers at increased risk of developing radiation induced cancers.

Even as X-rays vied with radium as the preferred tool for biological experimentation in later decades, [Hermann Joseph] Muller continued to rely on radium not only as a mutagen, but also as an important conceptual tool, seeing radium and life as somehow intimately connected analogically, discursively, evolutionarily, mechanistically, and metaphysically.

City retailers are doing well with high-class radiums printed in bright greens, brilliant purples and strong yellows. Such are the high novelties.

In printed silks for outer garments and linings there are crêpe de chines, silk and cotton crêpes, georgettes, radiums and mousselines de soie. [...] [O]n radiums; Japanese print designs, silhouetted with parasols or flowers and shrubs, treated in Japanese style, on dark grounds, are employed. There are also a number of futuristic figures printed on radiums.

Radium satins will also be used extensively in the spring season.

Radium, a term rather loosely applied to the bulk of domestic cloths of this class, includes goods of two fairly distinct types. [...] It is often tightly woven under high tension and so finished as to produce a highly lustrous appearance. But high luster is not essential, for many high-grade radiums are given a more or less dull finish. Of whatever finish, various cloths of this type are manufactured sometimes under the designation radium and sometimes under special copyrighted names.

We want popular verbs for several operations introduced by modern science. The X-rays, the Finsen treatment for lupus, the operation of radium for cancer, and what not—what are the words for these? A man is guillotined or hanged; his leg is amputated; he is trepanned. What is it when he is rayed, Finsened, radiumed? [From the St. James's Gazette.]

The victims thereof [i.e., of rheumatism] are drenched with salicylates and iodides; they are sent to spas to be bombarded by the doucheur and spanked by the masseur; they are subjected to electrical ecstasies and suffer Zander contortions; they are cataphoresed, vaccinated, serummed, radiumed and dieted, with results which vary from the sublime to the pathetic.

The problem that we have to face in radiuming tumors is very complicated. [...] [T]he problem of distribution is to distribute throughout the territory irradiated an even dose, and we have found that that is a very difficult thing.

Towards the end he was attended by Dr. Hymie Rubin. The great specialists with their fabulous bills had cut and radiumed to the tune of tumbling doubloons. [...] But the priceless surgeons said—too late: they could not repair the digestive engine after it had been knocked to pieces by years of neglect and abuse …