Patented Poison: Radithor and the Fate of Eben Byers

Poor Historians: Misadventures in Medical History

The 1920's was a time in the U.S. when anybody with a clever sales pitch and a willingness to pull a patent could devise a concoction and call it a "medication." Unfortunately, the heyday of the "patent medicine" era coincided with the discovery of radium before the downstream consequences of radioactivity were known. The wealthy industrialist, Eben Byers found himself unwittingly the victim of the hazardous set of circumstances. This is the story of how a patented substance called Radithor, which was sold through doctors as a medication, helped play a part in bringing an end to this time of unregulated pharmaceutical madness.
Sources:

https://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,743525,00.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_J._A._Bailey

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eben_Byers

https://orau.org/health-physics-museum/collection/radioactive-quack-cures/pills-potions-and-other-miscellany/radithor.html

https://web.archive.org/web/20160113201140/http://www.alleghenycemetery.com/images/newsletter/newsletter_XIII_1.pdf

http://large.stanford.edu/courses/2016/ph241/yoon2/

https://sc.edu/about/offices_and_divisions/research/news_and_pubs/caravel/archive/2020_fall/2020_medicalknowledge.php
#quackmedicine #medicalhistory #medicine #history #podcast #Radithor #radium

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