Psychology Today | 08.08.2026 22:03
A reporter cornered Marie Curie in 1904 and asked whether radium might cure disease. She refused to guess. Nothing had been demonstrated, she said, and she would not pretend otherwise. Her caution vanished the moment marketers got hold of her discovery. Drugstores sold radium water by crate. Chocolate came laced with it. A Pittsburgh steel heir named Eben Byers drank roughly 1,400 bottles of a radium tonic called Radithor, convinced he had found a private engine of vitality. His jaw dissolved. His skull grew holes. The Wall Street Journal summed up the era in 10 words: "The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off."
