Half Lives

The Unlikely History of Radium

De: Lucy Jane Santos

Narrado por: Deirdre Whelan

The fascinating, curious, and sometimes macabre history of radium as seen in its uses in everyday life

Of all the radioactive elements discovered at the end of the 19th century, it was radium that became the focus of both public fascination and entrepreneurial zeal.

Half Lives tells the fascinating, curious, sometimes macabre story of the element through its ascendance as a desirable item - a present for a queen, a prize in a treasure hunt, a glow-in-the-dark dance costume - to its role as a supposed cure-all in everyday 20th-century life, when medical practitioners and business people (reputable and otherwise) devised ingenious ways of commodifying the new wonder element, and enthusiastic customers welcomed their radioactive wares into their homes.

Lucy Jane Santos - herself the proud owner of a formidable collection of radium beauty treatments - delves into the stories of these products and details the gradual downfall and discredit of the radium industry through the eyes of the people who bought, sold, and eventually came to fear the once-fetishized substance.

Half Lives is a new history of radium as part of a unique examination of the interplay between science and popular culture.

©2020 Lucy Jane Santos (P)2020 W. F. Howes, Ltd.

Amazing and horrifying

Wow what a story. The discovery and multiple uses of products containing radiation. My grandparents generation was caught up in the craze. Luckily they were not wealthy, but they were likely exposed to the creams, lotions, water, etc. Yet are many still not using these for the supposed healthy benefits? I love the way this book is written, but at each turn of the “page” I was amazed at how little we learn as a species.

Great book! Perfect narration.

super interesting all the way through. things you could never imagine and it's a good thing we know about him now. it's incredible how gullible people are and how much they will grab at straws or brass rings to try to find solutions to problems whether they're trivial problems or earth-shaking ones. radiation is such an amazing part of our lives.

Radium, Radiation, and Radioactivity

“Half Lives” tells the story of Radium in our modern world from its discovery in the late 1800s to today. 

It was an age of discovery but also of mystery. Electricity was being generated and put to some use though no one understood why rotating a magnet in coils of wire should produce energy. In doing some experiments with a Crookes tube, some scientists discovered photographic paper was exposed even when blocked by various materials. They realized that there must be some other kind of ray besides light being produced, but that this unknown ray, which became called the x-ray because it was still unknown, could not be so easily blocked as light could. But, electricity was required to produce this radiation. 

When the element Radium was discovered by Marie Curie, she continued to test it and found that it also had the ability to expose photographic plates, but without electricity. It’s radiation was natural. It is easy to see how all of this could have seemed magical to the average person, but especially radium. Here was a metal that first of all was extremely rare and difficult to isolate, but it also produced invisible radiation and did so naturally. 

It had already become known that prolonged exposure to x-rays caused serious skin rashes which could develop into cancers, but that was prolonged exposure. It had already shown its benefit in small doses to allow physicians to see into a human body to find broken bones, bullets, etc. It didn’t take long to find out that radium could also be harmful, but most people assumed that in small quantities it could be beneficial. Then it was found that the water in many natural springs contained traces of radium. 

Spas began claiming curative properties and radium treatments. Some realized that the miracle cures of people who visited certain springs in the past possibly had ot been miraculous at all but due to the presence of radium.  In most, the amount of radium was so small that it was relatively harmless but, of course, some people abused that. Others added radium to water in larger quantities to be taken for health, to cosmetics, and even to the head of a walking stick to give extra energy to the elderly and infirm. Since radium glowed very slightly in the dark the military added it to watch faces and other dials. And others simply used radium in their product name without actually including any radium in the product. Some of this may sound very silly to us now, but at that time radiation was little understood and radioactivity was even less so. But, eventually the evidence became overwhelming. Today, the only commercial use for radium is in cancer treatment. It is highly radioactive and has a half-life of 1,600 years. 

When government began cracking down on the use of radium in patent medications, interestingly the claim was that no “physician” should be required to reveal the secrets behind his formula and also that it was just a case of the medical establishment trying to shut out the little guy and keep cures off the market for their own benefit. 

Quite an interesting book, neither too technical nor too simple. 

A clarifying perspective!

This is a fascinating story rendered with great clarity and with just the right depth of detail. I was entertained and enlightened! Recommended!

IGNORANCE IS NOT BLISS

Lucy Jane Santos recounts the perilous history of radioactivity in “Half Lives”. Her history is not scintillating but offers a lesson in skepticism. Her focus is the “on again, off again” love affair with radon by scientists, doctors, charlatans, and beauty product entrepreneurs. The lesson is relevant in some ways to the Covid19 controversy of this century.

Santos’s story is a warning to humanity. Be skeptical of cures that purport to be safe and beneficial, and review facts available from reputable sources. Today’s vaccination for Covid19 is a case in point. The facts are that over 650,000 Americans have died from Covid19. Those who have received the “jab” are less likely to die if they are infected by the virus. The virus is transmitted from person to person and can be mitigated by wearing a mask. Consider the source of those who promote or deny those facts. When facts are distorted by politics, we only have ourselves to blame. Humans need to be skeptical but not ignorant.

Fantastic Book!

This is a history lesson in x-ray and gamma discovery. It’s also a precautionary tale of how overly confident scientists and experts can convince the lay public something is safe when it isn’t even really understood by the scientists and experts.