Episode description

Ebenezer “Eben” McBurney Byers was the personification of the Roaring Twenties: Chairman of his own company, private box at the baseball, golf pro, ladies' man - total Great Gatsby vibes. 

Unfortunately, Eben had a fall one day leaving him with an injury that dented his athletic prowess. Conventional treatment failed and so his physiotherapist, Dr. Charles Moyar, suggested he try RadiThor, an energy drink advertised as “Pure Sunshine in a Bottle” and accompanied, as quackery always is, by the usual panacea claim. 

Eben loved it. He was back in fine form and for the next two years, he drank two or three bottles of RadiThor every day.

But what was in this miracle drink? Well, not a lot. Just some triple distilled water and at least 1 microcurie each of radium-226 and radium-228. That means radioactive water for those non-nuclear savvy folks. So let’s look at the research showing the safety and efficacy of radium water… *crickets*.

From 1918 to 1928, RadiThor was manufactured by the Bailey Radium Laboratories, owned by William Bailey, a con man known for peddling various miracle cures like Las-I-Co, which promised “Superb Manhood” for those identifying as a “man in name only”.

Naturally, Bailey added “aphrodisiac” to the long list of RadiThor’s promised effects, claiming it improved blood supply to the pelvic organs and had tonic effects on the nervous system resulting in vast improvements downstairs. This claim was perfectly timed given the early 20th-century hysteria surrounding the amazing benefits of “Mild Radium Therapy”, and some ground-breaking radioactive research claiming that mild radium exposure increased passion amongst water newts.

Knowing what we know now, how did Eben fair after voraciously imbibing RadiThor? Not well. Not well at all. 

It started with headaches and jaw pain, and rapidly progressed to widespread toothaches. X-rays showed that Eben’s body was slowly decomposing from the bones out as a result of his massive radium toxification. Decomposition was most severe in his lower skull, after two salvage facial operations, he was left completely without a jaw (!) and missing all but 6 teeth (there’s a picture in the video on YouTube… not for the faint-hearted).

In April 1932, Eben Byers died of radium poisoning and was buried in a lead coffin. 

Unsurprisingly, a cry went out to investigate RadiThor and other radium concoctions, and the swift collapse of all the radioactive patent medicines quickly followed. 

But somehow, radium water manufacturer William Bailey never stopped insisting RadiThor was safe. In fact, he drank more than Eben did and was “as fit as a fiddle.” He suffered no legal consequences for selling the stuff and died a very wealthy man.

Fun epilogue, 20 years after Bailey died (of bladder cancer), medical researchers exhumed him and discovered that his skeleton was absolutely ravaged by radiation. How he managed to avoid radiation poisoning whilst alive remains a mystery.

Perhaps in formulating his energy drink, he shouldn’t have taken the word “energy” quite so literally.

PREVIOUS EPISODES MENTIONED:

Charles-Édouard Brown-Séquard and The Origin of Performance Enhancing Drugs!

SOURCES:

• Energy Drinks: An Assessment of Their Market Size, Consumer Demographics, Ingredient Profile, Functionality, and Regulations in the United States 29 Apr 2010 by M.A. Heckman, K. Sherry, E. Gonzalez De Mejia

• The Quack Medicine RadiThor 27 Jun, 2022 by Rupert Taylor

• TIME magazine - Medicine: Radium Drinks 11 Apr, 1932

• When ‘energy’ drinks actually contained radioactive energy 3 Nov 2016 by Timothy J. Jorgensen

• Radium Cures, Museum of Quackery

• William J.A.Bailey & RadiThor, Wikipedia

• NEWSLETTER NO. 20 - Medical Collectors Association The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off ... Cancer Researcher Unearths A Bizarre Tale of Medicine And Roaring '20s Society Nov 1991 by Ron Winslow 

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