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LITTLE BLUE BOOK NO. 1000
Edited by E. Haldeman-Julius
The Wonders
of Radium
Maynard Shipley
HALDEMAN-JULIUS COMPANY
GIRARD, KANSAS
Copyright, 1926,
Haldeman-Julius Company
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
THE WONDERS OF RADIUM
CONTENTS
Page
I. Introductory 5
All Matter Radioactive 9
II. Everyday Uses of Radium 16
Radium Makes Gems Blush 18
A Radium Clock 19
III. Radium and the Age of the Earth 21
IV. An Epoch-Making Discovery 30
How Radium is Converted to Lead 34
V. Radium in the Treatment of Cancer 45
VI. Efficiency of Radium in Treatment of Various Diseases 51
VII. Where We Get Radium 55
New Sources of Radium 58
The Radioactive Disintegration Series 60
Uranium I Series 63
Uranium Y Series 63
Thorium Series 64
THE WONDERS OF RADIUM
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY
It has been well said that a general idea of what radioactivity
signifies is a necessary part of the education of every intelligent
person, since “it is the one thing of paramount importance in the
chemical and physical science of the day.” But its importance extends
much farther, since radioactivity is now employed in many departments
of industry, as well as in biology and medicine.
It is known that the rays from radium have the power to stimulate
all forms of life, even to the extent of speeding up the growth of
plants and of making dormant plants burst into bud. Some authorities,
as we shall see later, are fully convinced that the radiations can
be employed successfully in the prolongation of human life. It is
well known that radiotherapy has, for some years now, been employed
advantageously in the treatment of many forms of illness, and is, in
some institutions, the sole medium for the cure or alleviation of
cancer and other malignant growths.
Not long ago the discovery was made that the curative agent in certain
famous baths in Europe is the radium which the waters of their springs
contain.
If one could really buy bottled water which has been properly treated
with radium rays or the “emanation,” beneficial results would no doubt
be obtained. The trouble is that such waters are difficult to secure.
“None of the foreign or domestic commercial bottled water sold
to consumers on the claim of radioactive content really contains
sufficient radioactivity to warrant its purchase,” according to the
report of investigation completed by the water and beverage laboratory
of the United States Department of Agriculture, Washington, D. C.
“In the examination of 46 samples from 15 states and eight foreign
countries, the bureau found the highest quantity of radioactivity of a
temporary nature in a bottled water from Massachusetts.
“The largest amount of permanent radioactivity was in a sample from a
deep well in Ohio. It was found, however, that it would be necessary to
consume 2,810 gallons of the Massachusetts water, or 1,957 gallons of
the Ohio water daily to obtain an efficient dose of radioactive salts.
“During the tests radioactivity of samples was determined by means of
electroscopes.”
When radium is taken in soluble form, 25 or 50 percent of it remains
in the body for four or five days. The rate of excretion after that is
only about one percent a day. “Wherever it is located, it carries on a
constant bombardment in releasing its energy, giving strength to the
tissues, cells and protoplasm of the body. And when once these begin
to function actively, they begin to rebuild themselves.”
Radium does not combine chemically with any known substance in the
body. The therapeutic effects are indirect. When the electrons are
ejected with great speed from the atoms of the radioactive salts, they
pass through millions of other atoms, knocking out new electrons as
they go, leaving the atoms with a positive charge, in which condition
they are called “ions.” These positively charged particles at once
enter into new combinations, new chemical unions, which produce new
substances. But these may be injurious to the normal tissues as well
as to the cells of the disease which it is desired to destroy. In some
cases, the diseased cells are more susceptible to the rays than are the
normal cells, in which instances the growth of the abnormal or diseased
cells may be retarded, or they may even be totally destroyed. It is
thus seen that application of the rays may result in alleviation of the
disease, or, possibly, effect a complete cure, as the case may be.
The action of radium on various (colloidal) substances is now well
understood from the point of view of the biophysicist; but this phase
of the subject is too highly technical for exposition in a book
intended for popular circulation.
While it is fully recognized that there are quite definite limitations
to the efficacy of radioactivity in its application to disease, as a
matter of fact the use of radium as a therapeutic agent would be much
more extensive were it not for its high cost and scarcity. No one
questions its exceptional value in the treatment of certain diseases,
and a method will probably be discovered, in the near future, by which
it may veritably be used to postpone the age of senility.
A young man who had read somewhere that radium is a sure cure for any
and all of the ills to which flesh is heir, entered a drug store and
asked: “How much is radium an ounce?” The druggist smiled, and named
a figure which made the young man blink. “Not really?” observed the
prospective customer. “Then you may give me an ounce of cough lozenges.”
Until quite recently, an ounce of radium cost almost as much as 3¾ tons
of gold! That is to say, an ounce of radium, if this much could be
purchased “off hand”--which it couldn’t--would cost about $2,500,000.
The price was at one time $3,000,000 an ounce.
When we speak of “radium,” we really mean--or ought to mean--_radium
salts_. Pure radium soon abandons its metallic form by entering into
chemical combinations. It is the purified radium salts that cost, as
late as 1923, $2,500,000 an ounce--the price of ¾ of a ton of platinum,
the most “precious” of all the metals excepting radium. In 1920, radium
was 200 times more valuable than an equal weight of pure blue diamonds,
and 180,600 times as valuable as gold. A cubic foot of the salts--had
this amount been obtainable--would have been worth $7,000,000,000.
The reason for the high cost of radium is not far to seek. First, the
demand for the pure salts far exceeded the supply--and this is still
the case, though relief is now in sight. Secondly, the scarcity of
radium was due to the enormous amount of time and labor involved in its
production.
Although radium was discovered and isolated by Mme. Curie in 1898,
22 years later--at the close of 1920--scarcely 140 grams (or about
five ounces) of pure radium salts had been extracted and put on the
world market. Of this amount, about 70 grams had been produced in the
United States (during the preceding seven years). The market value of
the standard salts was at this time about $100,000 a gram (about 1/28
ounce). Eighteen grams were produced in this country in 1920, and the
value of the purified salts was quoted in some journals as $2,160,000.
At this price, about $100,000 worth of radium could be put into a glass
tube about the diameter of a very coarse pencil lead and not more than
an inch in length.
To produce the gram of radium salts presented to Mme. Curie by the
women of America (in May, 1921), 500 tons of carnotite ore--containing
two percent or less of uranium oxide--were treated, consuming in the
process 1,500 tons of coal, more than a ton of chemicals, and over 30
tons of water.
ALL MATTER RADIOACTIVE
While certain substances have been designated as “radioactive,” it is
not to be understood that these bodies alone emit charged particles, or
radiant energy.
“All bodies whatever are a constant source of visible or invisible
radiations, which, whether of one kind or the other, are always
radiations of light” (Le Bon, “The Evolution of Forces,” p. 318, 1908).
Compounds of potassium, and also of rubidium, caesium and lanthanum, as
shown by Campbell, Wood, McLennan, Kennedy, and other investigators,
possess very high radioactive properties. While the atomic weight of
potassium is only about 39, and of rubidium about 84, the typical
radioactive elements have atomic weights ranging from 200 to 238. Of
the 12 to 15 elements essential to life, potassium is the only one
possessing distinct if minute radioactivity. “The activity of potassium
may readily be demonstrated by means of the goldleaf electroscope. It
is shown that Beta rays are emitted” (Burns). But potassium is 1000
times weaker than uranium, and 1,000,000,000 times weaker than radium,
in the emission of Beta (negative) rays. Caesium and lanthanum emit
Alpha (positive) rays.
Professor Dufour, the distinguished French scientist, has shown that
even air that has been breathed emits radioactive particles. The
presence of radioactive matter in the atmosphere has been shown to
account for its electric conductivity. Thomson found (1906) that many
specimens of water from deep wells contain a radioactive gas, and
Elster and Gertel have found that a similar gas is contained in the
soil.
It is probably safe to assert, with Le Bon, that all matter, “down to
the absolute zero of temperature,” radiates electrified and more or
less luminous particles, albeit they are invisible to the human eye.
It is because of its property of emitting negative electrons (Beta
rays) that potassium is a necessary constituent of all living matter.
It may, however, be replaced, under certain conditions, by other
radioactive substances.
Prof. Barton Scammel, of the British Radium Society, gave it as his
opinion (in 1922) that further experience in the proper uses of
potassium salts and radium in solution would lead to the realization of
a new golden age. He predicted, among other “good tidings,” life for
120 years in the bloom of youth, the “pep” of 25 years at 75, a third
set of teeth, new hirsute coverings for erstwhile bald heads, muscles
like Jack Dempsey’s.
Dr. C. Everett Field, of the New York Radium Institute, stated
publicly, in backing up Scammel’s hopes and theories, that he thinks
another ten years will see human life vastly prolonged as a matter of
course by the use of radium. He said:
“We have ascertained beyond question that potassium salts are necessary
to heart action, that they are slightly radioactive, and that radium
can be substituted for them with a degree of success.
“It was Dr. Zwaardemaker, physiologist of the University of Utrecht,
who first discovered, a number of years ago, that radium could do in
the blood stream what potassium salts do in the normal person. He took
an animal’s heart, which was kept beating outside the animal, and
removed the potassium element. It was not longer possible then to keep
it in action. Then he substituted a radium solution and it was possible
to restore action.”
Dr. Field stated that it had been discovered that the systems of
victims of cancer and other wasting diseases were deficient in
potassium salts, and that as their systems were made to assimilate
potassium a tonic effect was noticeable at once. The greatest trouble
was to make the body assimilate the potassium.
“The fact is,” said Dr. Field, one of the more conservative radium
therapists, “that radium does not do the healing. But, for that matter,
neither does any other form of healing. The healing exists within
the organism. And radium, I am convinced, in some cases, is the most
efficient medicine to give needed stimulus to the healing apparatus of
diseased organisms.”
Even now, he believes, radioactive treatment may prolong life at least
15 years. For internal treatment, either doses of radioactive water,
or extremely minute quantities of radium itself, are administered.
Radioactive water is taken from springs found to contain traces of
radium, or radium is used to make ordinary water radioactive. The
difficulty with spring waters is that they lose their radioactive power
when bottled and transported, and must be consumed at their source.
“Because of this fact,” says a writer for _The Popular Science Monthly_
(June, 1923), “a group of physicians interested in the use of radium as
a curative stimulant have invented an ingenious device for imparting
radioactive properties to ordinary water. As designed for use in the
home, this instrument consists of a case containing an arrangement
of glass tubes and vessels in which emanations from radium salts in
solution are imparted to air, which is then mixed with the water.
“A much simpler apparatus, available for office use, somewhat resembles
a hypodermic syringe, containing special capsules of radium salts.
Pushing a plunger forces air through the radium capsules and into a
glass of water and is said to make the water radioactive. The doses of
radium in each case are constant, because radium emanates at a constant
rate, and only a certain amount can be dissolved in water, no matter
how many times a day the apparatus is brought into use.
“Whether radium treatment will prove able to restore youth to old age,
grow new sets of teeth and perform other marvels that its more ardent
supporters predict for it, only time will tell.
“If radium treatment proves to facilitate the process of cell
elimination, it will have gone a long way toward delivering the world
from its enemies of disease.”
The philosopher-scientist, Le Bon, makes bold to suggest that
light-waves which are invisible to human eyes may be perceptible to
nocturnal animals, which would include most of the lemurs and the
felines, and some other beasts which seem to be capable of finding
their way and carrying on their predatory or other activities in the
dark. “To them,” says Le Bon, “the body of a living being, whose
temperature is about 37° C., or about 98° F., ought to be surrounded
by a luminous halo, which the want of sensitiveness of our eyes alone
prevents our discovering. There do not exist in nature, in reality, any
dark bodies, but only imperfect eyes.”
Le Bon has also said that the human body is sufficiently radioactive
to photograph itself by its own rays, if we could find a substance
sensitive to these radiations, as the photographic plate is to the
actinic rays. Nothing would then be easier, he declares, than to
photograph a living body in the dark without any other source of light
than the invisible light which it is continually emitting.
Some recent (1924) experiments of the French scientist, Dr. Albert
Nodon, seem to afford the actual proof of Le Bon’s _a priori_
conclusions. In the presence of a number of noted scientists, Dr. Nodon
exhibited three photographic plates on which were unmistakable light
impressions, which, he claimed, were caused by the rays emitted by a
radioactive mineral, an insect, and a green leaf, which had been placed
on the emulsion side of the plates in a dark-room.
A similar experiment, in which a dead insect and a dead leaf were used,
resulted in no ray impressions on the plates. Dr. Nodon offered as his
conclusion that radioactivity is an inevitable accompaniment of living
processes, and stated that the strength of photographic impressions
produced in experiments such as his are an accurate measure of vitality
(see _Popular Science Monthly_, October, 1924).
Radium is probably present in all the planets and stars. Some time ago
the Astronomer Royal of England, Dr. F. W. Dyson, demonstrated the
existence of radium and of radium emanation in the sun’s chromosphere
(the ocean of incandescent hydrogen gas surrounding the photosphere, or
actual surface of the sun).