The Story Of The Man Who Died From Drinking Too Much Radium (2024)

This was the title of a Wall Street Journal article that came out some time after Byers's passing, succinctly summingup what happened to him. In 1927, Byers was on a train returning from a Harvard-Yale football gamewhen he fell from his bunkand hurt his arm. The pain didn't go away, so Byers's doctor prescribed him Radithor.

Radithor was simply radium dissolved in water, marketed as a healing tonic. At a time when radium-infused productswere very popular, it was unsurprising that Byers was more than happy to take Radithor. In fact, Byers was so keen on the product and its supposed benefitsthat he ended up drinking three bottlesevery day for two years, until the poison caught up with him and began dissolving him from the inside out.

William J.A. Bailey wasn't a doctor, even though he claimed to be. He was a Harvard dropout who got rich quick after developing Radithor, a toxicsolution of radium dissolved in water. He wasa fraudwho was repeatedly in trouble with the law andprofited off numerous short-lived business start-ups.

The FDA shut down Bailey's business, but Bailey had already done his damage. The amount of people who perishedfrom Radithor is unknown, but he sold approximately 400,000 bottles of the tonic - 1,400 of which Byers himself purchased.

The quick story is that Byers fell on a train, hurt his arm, took Radithor, and thought it made him better so he kept taking it. There is, though, perhaps another reason Byers was so enthusiastic about Radithor, to the point where he reportedly even gave cases of the stuff to his girlfriends and his race horses.

Byers had a reputation as a ladies'man. At Yale, his nickname was "Foxy Grandpa."His fall on the train reportedly injured not only his arm, but also his game. Byers complained of a sort of "run-down feeling" that affected his athletic and sexual performance. That's when Byers discovereda product on the market that claimed to solveall of these issues. The sexually reparative nature of Radithor was only rumored, but it is unsurprising that a man entering his 50s with a reputation for being popular with women would seek out anything to help him maintain his "Foxy Grandpa" status.

The problem with touting radioactivity as curative was that it simply wasn't true. Luckily, most of these quack elixirs were phony, and contained no radium at all (of course, this was not the case with Radithor). Still, there weremyriad products on the market meant to be extremely good for you -there were radium-infused beauty creams, toothpastes, soaps, bars of chocolates -you name it.

The American public had an obsession with radium in the 1920s and '30s that only faded after Byers's passingbrought the real dangers of radium to light.

Eben Byers was the son of a well-known entrepreneur, and he was the chairman of his father's steel company. He attended Yale, golfed, raced horses, and was popular with women. He was the perfect candidate for a tragic, newsworthy story -made evenmore fascinating and terrifying because he perishedafter drinking what was touted as a health tonic, completely available to the public. Everything about Byers's story differs from the devastating story of the Radium Girls.

The tragedy of the Radium Girls - femalefactory employees who became painfully sick and perishedof radium poisoning -waswell covered by the media, but was less compelling to the governmentthan the storyof Byers, a socialitein the public eye. It wasn't until Byerstold the Federal Trade Commission about Radithor, while on his deathbed, that radium was removed from the federally approved list of medicines.

In the 1920s, people knew about -and believed in -the healing powers ofhot springs. When it was discovered that the water in hot springs was mildly radioactive, due to the radon gas dissolved in the water, it was concluded that it was the radioactivity that was so curative. InThe American Journal of Clinical Medicine, Dr. C.G. Davis claimed, "Radioactivity prevents insanity, rouses noble emotions, retards old age, and creates a splendid youthful joyous life." It was no wonder products infused with radium, such as candy, hair tonics,and even blankets, were so popular.

However, radon gas is entirely different from radium, the element found in Radithor. Radon gas has a half-life of about three days -radium has one of 1,600 years. Seeing as Byers took three times the already toxicdose of Radithor, he was irrevocably doomed.