The Wonders of Radium

CHAPTER I. Introductory

INTRODUCTORY

It has been well said that a general idea of what radioactivity signifies is a necessary part of the education of every intelligent person, since “it is the one thing of paramount importance in the chemical and physical science of the day.” But its importance extends much farther, since radioactivity is now employed in many departments of industry, as well as in biology and medicine.

It is known that the rays from radium have the power to stimulate all forms of life, even to the extent of speeding up the growth of plants and of making dormant plants burst into bud. Some authorities, as we shall see later, are fully convinced that the radiations can be employed successfully in the prolongation of human life. It is well known that radiotherapy has, for some years now, been employed advantageously in the treatment of many forms of illness, and is, in some institutions, the sole medium for the cure or alleviation of cancer and other malignant growths.

Not long ago the discovery was made that the curative agent in certain famous baths in Europe is the radium which the waters of their springs contain.

If one could really buy bottled water which has been properly treated with radium rays or the “emanation,” beneficial results would no doubt be obtained. The trouble is that such waters are difficult to secure.

“None of the foreign or domestic commercial bottled water sold to consumers on the claim of radioactive content really contains sufficient radioactivity to warrant its purchase,” according to the report of investigation completed by the water and beverage laboratory of the United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.

“In the examination of 46 samples from 15 states and eight foreign countries, the bureau found the highest quantity of radioactivity of a temporary nature in a bottled water from Massachusetts.

“The largest amount of permanent radioactivity was in a sample from a deep well in Ohio. It was found, however, that it would be necessary to consume 2,810 gallons of the Massachusetts water, or 1,957 gallons of the Ohio water daily to obtain an efficient dose of radioactive salts.

“During the tests radioactivity of samples was determined by means of electroscopes.”

When radium is taken in soluble form, 25 or 50 percent of it remains in the body for four or five days. The rate of excretion after that is only about one percent a day. “Wherever it is located, it carries on a constant bombardment in releasing its energy, giving strength to the tissues, cells and protoplasm of the body. And when once these begin to function actively, they begin to rebuild themselves.”

Radium does not combine chemically with any known substance in the body. The therapeutic effects are indirect. When the electrons are ejected with great speed from the atoms of the radioactive salts, they pass through millions of other atoms, knocking out new electrons as they go, leaving the atoms with a positive charge, in which condition they are called “ions.” These positively charged particles at once enter into new combinations, new chemical unions, which produce new substances. But these may be injurious to the normal tissues as well as to the cells of the disease which it is desired to destroy. In some cases, the diseased cells are more susceptible to the rays than are the normal cells, in which instances the growth of the abnormal or diseased cells may be retarded, or they may even be totally destroyed. It is thus seen that application of the rays may result in alleviation of the disease, or, possibly, effect a complete cure, as the case may be.

The action of radium on various (colloidal) substances is now well understood from the point of view of the biophysicist; but this phase of the subject is too highly technical for exposition in a book intended for popular circulation.

While it is fully recognized that there are quite definite limitations to the efficacy of radioactivity in its application to disease, as a matter of fact the use of radium as a therapeutic agent would be much more extensive were it not for its high cost and scarcity. No one questions its exceptional value in the treatment of certain diseases, and a method will probably be discovered, in the near future, by which it may veritably be used to postpone the age of senility.

A young man who had read somewhere that radium is a sure cure for any and all of the ills to which flesh is heir, entered a drug store and asked: “How much is radium an ounce?” The druggist smiled, and named a figure which made the young man blink. “Not really?” observed the prospective customer. “Then you may give me an ounce of cough lozenges.”

Until quite recently, an ounce of radium cost almost as much as 3¾ tons of gold! That is to say, an ounce of radium, if this much could be purchased “off hand”--which it couldn’t--would cost about $2,500,000. The price was at one time $3,000,000 an ounce.

When we speak of “radium,” we really mean--or ought to mean--radium salts. Pure radium soon abandons its metallic form by entering into chemical combinations. It is the purified radium salts that cost, as late as 1923, $2,500,000 an ounce--the price of ¾ of a ton of platinum, the most “precious” of all the metals excepting radium. In 1920, radium was 200 times more valuable than an equal weight of pure blue diamonds, and 180,600 times as valuable as gold. A cubic foot of the salts--had this amount been obtainable--would have been worth $7,000,000,000.

The reason for the high cost of radium is not far to seek. First, the demand for the pure salts far exceeded the supply--and this is still the case, though relief is now in sight. Secondly, the scarcity of radium was due to the enormous amount of time and labor involved in its production.

Although radium was discovered and isolated by Mme. Curie in 1898, 22 years later--at the close of 1920--scarcely 140 grams (or about five ounces) of pure radium salts had been extracted and put on the world market. Of this amount, about 70 grams had been produced in the United States (during the preceding seven years). The market value of the standard salts was at this time about $100,000 a gram (about 1/28 ounce). Eighteen grams were produced in this country in 1920, and the value of the purified salts was quoted in some journals as $2,160,000. At this price, about $100,000 worth of radium could be put into a glass tube about the diameter of a very coarse pencil lead and not more than an inch in length.

To produce the gram of radium salts presented to Mme. Curie by the women of America (in May, 1921), 500 tons of carnotite ore--containing two percent or less of uranium oxide--were treated, consuming in the process 1,500 tons of coal, more than a ton of chemicals, and over 30 tons of water.

ALL MATTER RADIOACTIVE

While certain substances have been designated as “radioactive,” it is not to be understood that these bodies alone emit charged particles, or radiant energy.

“All bodies whatever are a constant source of visible or invisible radiations, which, whether of one kind or the other, are always radiations of light” (Le Bon, “The Evolution of Forces,” p. 318, 1908).

Compounds of potassium, and also of rubidium, caesium and lanthanum, as shown by Campbell, Wood, McLennan, Kennedy, and other investigators, possess very high radioactive properties. While the atomic weight of potassium is only about 39, and of rubidium about 84, the typical radioactive elements have atomic weights ranging from 200 to 238. Of the 12 to 15 elements essential to life, potassium is the only one possessing distinct if minute radioactivity. “The activity of potassium may readily be demonstrated by means of the goldleaf electroscope. It is shown that Beta rays are emitted” (Burns). But potassium is 1000 times weaker than uranium, and 1,000,000,000 times weaker than radium, in the emission of Beta (negative) rays. Caesium and lanthanum emit Alpha (positive) rays.

Professor Dufour, the distinguished French scientist, has shown that even air that has been breathed emits radioactive particles. The presence of radioactive matter in the atmosphere has been shown to account for its electric conductivity. Thomson found (1906) that many specimens of water from deep wells contain a radioactive gas, and Elster and Gertel have found that a similar gas is contained in the soil.

It is probably safe to assert, with Le Bon, that all matter, “down to the absolute zero of temperature,” radiates electrified and more or less luminous particles, albeit they are invisible to the human eye.

It is because of its property of emitting negative electrons (Beta rays) that potassium is a necessary constituent of all living matter. It may, however, be replaced, under certain conditions, by other radioactive substances.

Prof. Barton Scammel, of the British Radium Society, gave it as his opinion (in 1922) that further experience in the proper uses of potassium salts and radium in solution would lead to the realization of a new golden age. He predicted, among other “good tidings,” life for 120 years in the bloom of youth, the “pep” of 25 years at 75, a third set of teeth, new hirsute coverings for erstwhile bald heads, muscles like Jack Dempsey’s.

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