RADIUM, Ra

PRIVATE COLLECTIONS

Following its discovery by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898, radium was recognized as useful in the treatment of cancer, and the world became suddenly obsessed with this exciting element. During the ‘radium craze’ of the 1920s, people exploited its ‘health benefits’ in radium spas, and its marketing power with brands like ‘radium’ shoe polish and razor blades. The Revigator water jar, lined with uranium ore which would release radium and radon as it decayed, promised a healthy glow but delivered less-than-healthy arsenic, lead, vanadium, and uranium.

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ARTEFACTS FROM THE RADIUM CRAZE