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When financial hardship caused William John Aluisius Bailey to drop out of Harvard University before finishing his degree, it didn't stop him from awarding himself a degree anyway, a medical degree, and he called himself doctor William Bailey, but the press in the public considered him a quote scholarly looking man and didn't really seem to care so much about his
credentials in his professional life. Many believed the promises he made about his patent medicines regardless of his diploma, but they should have cared, as his patent medicines could and would literally eat holes in your bones and ravage your body with cancer, and Bailey just kept the products rolling off the line for years as his patients suffered. So this one is a real villain story. Welcome to Criminalia.
I'm Marian tro Markin and I'm Holly Frye. William Bailey's career was as a shady businessman, not a medical professional, and between roughly nineteen oh six in the late nineteen thirties, he launched a series of startup companies some of which made him wealthy, but none of which managed to operate for more than a few years. New discoveries of radioactive elements created a patent medicine craze that Bailey capitalized on.
Products with lethal radioactive substances were sold with unproven promises to cure everything from arthritis to impotence. It was said they could help you regain your youth. Patent medicine wasn't his first corporate venture. He didn't start in radioactive products. But the first sleazy business endeavor that led him into
trouble was this. In nineteen twelve, Bailey was in the automotive business sort of, and his company, the Carnegie Engineering Corporation, claimed to be selling a newly designed automobile with the price tag of approximately six hundred dollars. For perspective on that, prices for Henry Ford's nineteen twelve Model T touring car started at six hundred and ninety dollars. Bailey received some
fifteen hundred orders and presumably that many deposits too. It was fifty dollars to get your name on the waiting list.
What got Bailey in.
Trouble with federal authorities wasn't his use of the name Carnegie, though it waves like a giant red flag as the American industrialist had nothing to do with this company, but instead it was his inadequate production capacity. And they were right. His factory was really just an abandoned sawmill that contained nothing more than a single box of tools, and that for sure is not how cars were built. In nineteen twelve, as reported in the May eighth, nineteen fifteen edition of
The New York Times, Bailey was arrested for this. He was found guilty and was fined and sentenced to thirty days in prison.
At the time of his arrest, he was also president and treasurer of another startup, the American Hardware and Machinery Export Corporation, But after his release from prison, he set out to conquer the world of patent medicines, specifically radioactive patent medicines, which may have been inspired by physicist and chemist Marie Currie's pioneering research on radiation and her visit with United States President Harding in May of nineteen twenty one.
That is conjecture on our behalf, but her work does line up with the radium trend and with Bailey's new business plans, and we'll talk a little bit more about her later in the episode.
So a few years earlier, a nineteen thirteen article in the Lancet Medical Journal noted that radium water did seem to boost the libido of newts yes the Amphibian, though there was no proof of that still. One of Bailey's earliest patent medicine products was called Lasico for superb manhood, an alleged cure from male impotence, which got him fined in nineteen eighteen by a Chicago court for exploiting a quote quack aphrodisiac.
By nineteen twenty two, Bailey had launched another new company called Associated Radium Chemists, operating out of New York City. Arium The company's signature product appears to first show up in a newspaper advertisement from November of nineteen twenty two. It was sold in a tin container, and that container held forty two tablets of quote genuine radium, and it costs only a dollar, which is roughly twenty dollars a
ten today. According to instructions on the label, one should quote take two tablets with glass of water before or after each meal to derive the most beneficial effects. Arium should be taken regularly as directed. Arium was marketed as
an aphrodisiac, but associated radium. Chemists also produced other items, including linarium, which was a liniment, ointarium which was an ointment, dentarium which was a toothpaste cap, aarium, a hair tonic dax for soothing coughs, and claques for treating influenza.
An advertorial in the Zanesville Signal on December second, nineteen twenty six, claimed quote, recent investigation shows that the pep energy, endurance, and nerve force of the average man past forty may often be increased by one hundred percent by getting into his system the marvelous restorative radium power of aarium.
Another advertisement for arium, printed in the Newark, Ohio Advocate on February sixteenth, nineteen twenty three, stated quote, is rheumatism dragging you into old age? How radium reduces it, inflammation, relieves pain, and renews the energy and vigor of use. Ariam now recommended by leading physicians as the new harmless way to
obtain radium for internal use. Five thousand dollars reward if they fail, foreshadowing aside that five thousand dollars reward should have gone to anyone who lived through trying arium to cure anything. Consumers, though, loved this product. Of many positive testimonials was this one from Reverend H. McKenna in nineteen twenty five, who, after taking Ariam tablets, stated quote, I feel like a kid. Bailey's patent medicine business was off with a bang.
While Reverend McKenna may have felt like a kid again when he took Ariam tablets, he didn't know he was playing with poison. We're going to take a break for a word from our sponsors, and when we return, we'll talk about whether or not William Bailey's radium infused products were or were not good for your health.
Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's talk about William Bailey's companies and his two most popular products, the radiendocrenator device and his Ratathor elixir.
Shortly after launching Associated radium Chemists, Bailey founded another company, American Endocrine Laboratories, which occupied several different locations across New York City between the early nineteen twenties and nineteen thirty, when it closed its doors. Its flagship product was called the radio Endocrinator, and it was according to company marketing materials quote the last word in scientific manufacture. The product was housed in a case called the adapter and was
intended to be worn against your skin. The radioactive source inside the adapter consisted of seven then give or take, radium soaked blotterlike pieces of paper, each one the size of a credit card. Each was covered with a thin piece of plastic and two gold wire screens.
Users were encouraged to wear it wherever and whenever, at home, at work, it didn't matter. Promotional booklets and materials showed both men and women wearing nothing but their radiendocrinator strapped to their head, their neck, back, among other places on the body. It's intended, and we should say alleged health benefits came from irradiating the endocrine glands, which quote have
so masterful of control over life and bodily health. As for one very cringe inducing example of its use, men were advised as follows quote mail, place radiendocrenator in the pocket of this adapter, with the window upward toward the body where adapter, like any athletic, strap the cloth label in the front. This puts the instrument under the scrotum as it should be where at night Radi eight as directed.
This terrifying device sold for one hundred and fifty dollars, which might seem very high, although it was initially priced at one thousand.
Coincidentally, when American Endocrine Laboratories first opened, it occupied space in the same building as Vitamin Corporation, which was owned by doctor Hermann Ruben, who hawked a product called Maston's Vitamin Health Tablets. Ruben's relationship with Bailey and American Endocrine Laboratories is not completely clear, though it is clear there was one. A nineteen twenty four newspaper advertorial featuring Bailey included a photograph of Rubens standing next to a radiendocrinator.
It was egg shaped and about the size of a football and mounted on a stand. Other articles would follow and included similar photos of the men.
The earliest reference to the radio indocrinator and to American Endocrine Laboratories is in a booklet that came out in nineteen twenty three. That same year, Rubin published two books,
each mentioning the device. One was Scientific Rejuvenation Without Operation and the other was The New Science of Endochronology in its relation to rejuvenation American Endocrine Laboratories marketed and distributed them both, plus a third book titled Your Mysterious Glands, How Your Glands Control Your mental and physical development and Moral Welfare that was published a few years later.
Rubenaugh denied that he held any interest in Bailey's company, and also denied he sold the radio indocrenator, but he did admit he used the device on patients in his medical practice, and admitted that when he prescribed it to patients, he did so through a company called Raticent Endocrine Laboratories, and he called the product the Rootcronator, and so yes, if it looks like a duck and it wacks like a duck,
then it is probably a duck. The endocrinator was just another name for the radi endocarnator, and Radison Endocrine Laboratories was another name used by American Endocrine Laboratories. So technically he didn't sell the radi endocrenator. But who did he think he was fooling? A bit of a spoiler about
the guy. Because of Reuben's business interests in sketchy health products and devices, he was expelled from the medical societies of the State of New York and the County of New York in March of nineteen twenty four, and in nineteen twenty six, Ratison Endocrine Laboratories changed their name to US Gamma Laboratories. Guys, we see you.
Some historians believe that Ruben and not Bailey, may have actually been the one who invented the radiandocrenator, sometimes referred to as the clinic type radi indocrenator. The problem with this version of the instrument was that it couldn't be mass produced and sold to the public because it was big. Remember we mentioned a moment ago it was the size
of a football. So either Reuben or Bailey, and it is not clear which created what became known as the standard, smaller version of the device, described at the time as quoted, the newest type of radiu indocrenator for home use is a very small device and comes together with adapters for attaching it to body.
Bailey left American Endocrine Laboratories probably in the mid nineteen twenties ish when he began focusing on his newest patent medicine called Ratathor the elixir would become his most famous and infamous product. He manufactured it at the New Bailey Radium Laboratories in East Orange, New Jersey.
Ratathor consisted of only a few ingredients, but they were very potent ingredients. Give ingredients were radium, specifically the radium two twenty six and two twenty eight isotopes, as well as the radioactive element mesothorium. The rest just some otherwise
harmless distilled water. This was marketed as a cure for asthma, constipation, low libido, diabetes, mental illness, and one hundred and forty five other ailments, and it worked by quote exciting the endocrine system into battling its afflictions, and one marketing campaign offered one thousand dollars to anyone who tried it and didn't think it was great. And no one ever claimed that reward.
But they should have, because if they lived to tell about it, it was a miracle. Today this product is considered one of the very first quote unquote energy drinks, but it's also one of the most well known examples of radioactive quackery. But in the nineteen twenties, for thirty dollars, you could, with no warning label in sight, purchase a case of twenty four to two ounds bottles for perspective, that's upwards of five hundred dollars a case in today's money.
Bailey had his hands in a lot of things, though in nineteen twenty four. In nineteen twenty five, he was also president of the Thorwn Company, located in New York City. The company specialized in thorium pharmaceutical preparations and marketing materials. Promised that they sold quote internal sunshine. That was their euphemism for claiming they cured male impotence. Thorium is a naturally occurring radioactive metal, and today it is a known carcinogen.
An example of one advertisement from nineteen twenty five featured a muscular, confident and shirtless man and claimed quote amazing earth power builds vigorous man power.
All his good fortune changed. In June of nineteen twenty six. He may have been focused on ratathor, but federal authorities were focused on well him. The United States Attorney for the District of Maryland filed an order for the quote seizure and condemnation of fifty six packages and one hundred and thirty five boxes of arium tablets shipped from New York by Associated radium chemists, stating that the company's claims quote regarding the curative and therapeutic effects of said article
were false and fraudulent. The court case became known as the United States versus fifty six packages of Arium tablets. When the United States Department of Agriculture analyzed the seized arium, they found that the tablets were actually composed of mainly lithium carbonate, starch, and talc, and each contained eight point five eight nanoquieries of radium.
Also in June of nineteen twenty six, the United States attorneys for the Western District of Pennsylvania and the District of Connecticut filed similar orders for the seizure and condemnation of additional packages of areum tablets. These seized packages of tablets shipped in February and July of nineteen twenty seven from New York to Tacoma, Washington. A subsequent analysis showed
that arium's content had changed slightly. These tablets contained a different amount of radium two point six nanacuries each, and strychnine had been added to the ingredients. Bailey closed down associated radium chemists and moved on. He played very fast and loose with company and product names that by the early nineteen thirties, he was running three different companies that
sold radioactive products to the public. Like Bailey Radium Laboratories, These three new companies were all based in East Orange, New Jersey, Adrenay Company, Bioay Company, and Thorinator Company. None of the three survived very long, and although Bailey blamed their failure on the effects of the Greek Depression, it was really his ongoing trouble with federal authority that was the cause of their demise.
It was a high profile radiation poisoning and subsequent death from Ratathor consumption that led to measures that would end Bailey's radium rain and strengthen the Food and Drug Administration's powers and oversight. Because the FDA was still very new, it was still quite weak, and the investigation into Ratithor and William Bailey was handed over to the Federal Trade Commission, a group that had more power. This was a nail in the coffin for bunk radioactive so called cures.
Here's the thing about radium. It was discovered by Marie and per Curie in eighteen ninety eight, and it is a naturally occurring silvery white radioactive metal that's formed when uranium and thorium, which are two other natural radioactive substances, decay in the environment. Radium glows blue green in the dark, and it gives off light for years without any apparent power source. Because of its chemical similarity to calcium, radium behaves chemically like calcium. When it's in the human body.
That's bad because it replaces the calcium in your bones. It is known as a quote bone seeker. Rather than passing through the body, it leaves behind radium deposits, and those deposits destroy blood cells, bone marrow, and other tissue. Depending on your level of exposure, it can cause everything from anemia, hair loss, cataracts, broken or loose teeth, impairment of the body's functioning of tissues and its organs, and an overwhelming increased risk of cancer. Radium can be lethal.
In fact, Marie Currey highlighted that the effects of radiation on the human body were not well understood at the time, and she never condoned its use in things that people might eat or drink. In nineteen thirty four, she died of aplastic anemia caused by radiation poisoning. Because of her groundbreaking work.
When Ratathor hit the market, it was already known that radium was dangerous, although it's unclear whether the public understood
that it could be lethal. In nineteen thirteen, five years before Bailey sold his Lassico for superb Manhood product, British scientist Walter Lazarus Barlow published a study correctly noting that ingested radium accumulates in the bones, and in nineteen fourteen, Professor Ernst Zublin, a medical professor at the University of Maryland, warned of its dangers to the body in a published review of seven hundred medical reports, many of which showed
that bone necrosis and ulcerations were a frequent side effect from ingesting radium. Despite their work, Ratithor sales remained strong through the nineteen twenties. According to a two thousand and seven report published in the Journal of Radiologic Protection, we now know that when radium is taken internally, the poisoning can be fatal within one month.
We're going to take a break here for a word from our Sponenzers, and when we're back we will talk about a man named Eben Byers who died a horrific and tragic death because of his continued consumption of radium infused water.
Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's meet Evan Byers, a popular industrialist slash playboy of the nineteen twenties.
Eben Byers died from his consumption of Ratathor. He was a Pittsburgh industrialist. He was suave, He was popular. He was also an amateur golfer with promise. He won the US Amateur Golf Championship in nineteen oh six. It was in nineteen twenty seven, after an arm injury just wouldn't heal properly and was spoiling his golf game, that his
physician suggested that he tried Bailey's Ratithor. Doctor Moyer, who prescribed the drink for buyers, insisted to federal authorities when later questioned that it was not harmful, stating quote, I never had a death among my patients for radium treatment. I have taken as much or more radium water of the same kind mister Byers took, and I am fifty
one years old, active and healthy. I believe that radium water has a definite place in the treatment of certain diseases, and I prescribe when I deem it necessary.
Byers was a well known guy, and his illness and death caused an inquiry into radioactive patent medicines like Ratithor. Federal authorities had some suspicions about the safety of the product before Buyer's death, and Federal Trade Commission lawyer Robert Heiner Wynn had been dispatched to interview him. Of that interview, which took place shortly before Buyers died, when described him as quote young in years and mentally alert, He could
hardly speak. His head was swathened bandages. He had undergone two successive operations in which his whole upper jaw, excepting two front teeth, and most of his lower jaw, had been removed. All the remaining bone tissue of his body was slowly disintegrating and holes were actually forming in his skull.
Timothy J. Jorgensen, a professor in the Department of Radiation Medicine at Georgetown University, stated about Buyers in an article for The Conversation that quote, although the product contained no narcotics, he became at least psychologically, if not physiologically, addicted to it. He continued to consume large amounts of Ratathor even after his arm had healed In fact, Buyers was so pro ratathor that he gifted cases of it to friends. He was a huge fan, and he even had it given
to his race horses. But then things took a turn for the worse. By lost a considerable amount of weight and began having headaches, and then began to suffer bone necrosis in his jaw, which caused him to lose several teeth. Radium jaw was a real thing. The condition caused dental pain, loose teeth, lesions, and ulcers, and the failure of tooth extractions to heal. A Wall Street Journal headlined bluntly stated quote the radium water worked fine until his jaw came off.
All the radium that Buyers had consumed had accumulated in his bones and caused his death in March of nineteen thirty two. He was fifty one.
When Evan Byers died from using the product. His physician, doctor Mayer, claimed he quote knew that his patient had really died from quote a combination of blood diseases which had induced gout. And autopsy, though did not agree with Moyer's conclusion. It was discovered that Buyers had an abscess on his brain. All but six of his teeth had fallen out, and his body contained more than three and a half times the lethal amount of radium. When he died.
He was buried in a lead lined coffin. Normally, that's to help keep out moisture and preserve the body for longer and prevent odors and toxins from escaping. In this case, it was specifically to block the radiation being released from the bones in his body. Radium has a half life of sixteen hundred years, so Buyer's bones have virtually the same amount of radium in them now as they did the day he died.
Bailey absolved himself in Buyer's death by stating he only provided ratathor to patients on a doctor's prescription. One such practitioner, doctor CG. Davis, was very pro radium and had written glowing things no pun intended about it in the American Journal of Clinical Medicine, including that quote radioactivity prevents insanity, rouses noble emotions, retards old age, and creates a splendid, youthful,
joyous life. At least six other physicians, according to Federal Trade Commission's investigation Information, prescribed ratithor and stated that none of their patients had died.
Radium infused drinks were removed from the market in December of nineteen thirty one, just three months before buyer's death from them. Ultimately, in the interest of protecting public health, the FTC closed down the Bailey Radium laboratories, but after the federal investigation, Bailey carried on. In nineteen thirty seven, he became a partner in lee Caalpadine Company of New York City. Their sole product consisted of calpidine tablets made
of compressed pelletized seaweed. That's right, there was nothing radioactive about this one. Marketing claims, though, were totally sketched, and promised that the tablets could treat thirty two specific diseases. And because of those outrageous promises that couldn't be backed up, he ran up against the FDA's mission and to crack down on such false claims. This was likely the final patent medicine Bailey marketed to the public.
In the end, Bailey died a wealthy man, suffering no consequence from the deadly effects of his snake oil products, while no serious or significant legal consequence. That is, he once said of his ratithor and its safety. Quote, I have drunk more radium water than any man alive, and I have never suffered any ill effects. But that too, was not the truth. He died in May of nineteen forty nine at the age of sixty four of bladder cancer.
Twenty years later, when his body was exhumed and tested for radioactive isotopes, Geiger counters found his body had been quote ravaged by radiation, and because of that half life, he still is.
There's no cure for what ails this, But what.
Do you have for us? No, there isn't, And in fact, that's kind of what inspires this drink. A few different things inspired this drink. One, of course, from a visual standpoint, I love the idea of radium being this kind of cloudy, silvery white and glowing greenish at night. Of course, there's going to be some fun color in this one. But the other thing that struck me about the story is just the damn denial that people would be in and be like, no, that's not that thing that I gave
that guy. That's poison. That's no way, that's not the problem at all. We're calling it radium denial. It has nothing dangerous in it. If you're allergic to alcohol, or if you drink too much, please drink responsibly. Anything can be problematic if you have too much of it, even water. But we're hoping that our listeners are a little bit more judicious than that. And this is a really easy one to put together. You want a very very cold,
pre chilled martini glass. Normally I don't care what glass you use, but this one, I really think like a pointy martini glass is gonna look the best. And you'll see why. There is a visual element to this. You are gonna put into your shaker, so simple, a half ounce of lime juice, a half ounce of orja, or a regular almond syrup. I will caveat this one and say, book for an almond syrup that has that like silvery
slightly milky look to it. And then you're just gonna do an ounce and a half of gin and you're gonna shake this with ice and then strain it into your pre chilled glass. And then you are gonna take a half ounce of midori and you're gonna very slowly and carefully pour it over a spoon down on one of the side edges of your glass. It won't all sink to the bottom, but some of it will some of it is gonna color your drink, and it ends up giving it this really fun green glow that kind
of comes from below. Here's the thing. I also had an accident one where it did it just mixed itself really fast, and even that green was quite beautiful and glowy. So it still has an effect of the visual, but that would also be for presentation only when you serve it. If the green is on the bottom, make clear to whoever is drinking it that they're going to want to swizzle it up before they actually take a sip. This
is a really yummy drink for me. I will say I made a complete disaster version earlier that I didn't care to speak on beyond acknowledging that it happened. But this one turned out beautifully and was a relief where I was like, oh, my goodness, have I lost my sense of like how things could go together? And I don't know what happened on the first one happened. I just lost my mind.
It happened.
I tried too much, and a lot of flavors gotten in argument. I will put it that way.
It seems like a very simple drink now it is.
It's very simple. It's super easy. If this is one of those ones that if it is too potent for you in its martini form, you can add a little club soda to it. You could even add a little tonic to it, and you essentially get like a gin and tonic with a honeydew note, which is quite lovely. I think there are some drinks like that already that are called like a Japanese gin and tonic or a Japanese tonic. It's delicious. The mocktail on this one is
pretty simple. We have talked about before, subbing out gin for a flat tonic, and I stand by it for this one. And then your orja and your lime juice are the same. And then in lieu of madori a honeydew syrup. And in case people don't remember, that's easy
to make. Just chop up some honeydew and boil it with a cup of water and a cup of sugar, and let that boil for a little while, and then strain it and keep that boiled sweet candied honeydew and put it on ice cream, your toast or whatever, or just eat it with a spoon like I do, because you cannot control your childlike some That is the radium denial, which contains no radioactive ingredients and is in fact yummy. And I want to raise it in honor of poor Eben who lost his life to.
Quackery what he thought was a health drink.
This is a problem always, it continues. There a lot of issues going on regarding what substances are and are not monitored by the FDA. And so just for our listeners, you're all bright, bright people, I know, but always be a little careful. When people over promise things to sound miraculous, it's probably not really going to be what they say it is. But I can promise you that the radium
denial is very delicious. It's not going to cure anything, but it might put a smile on your face, and really that's all I can ask for it.
Sometimes that's a cure.
It does have restorative properties. In that room, we are so grateful that you've spent this time with us today and we hope we will see you right back here next week at Criminalia, where there will be more snake oil and a little more of the cures. What a Criminalia is a production of Shondaland Audio in partnership with iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from Shondaland Audio, please visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.