The vitality-restoration claim was the principal marketing message targeted at affluent middle-aged men, the patient population most extensively reached by the Bailey Radium Laboratories distribution network. The claim is refuted by the empirical course of Eben Byers’s case and by the underlying medical reality of skeletal radium deposition. Reported subjective improvements in patient self-report during the early months of consumption are consistent with placebo response and with the temporary metabolic stimulation that low-dose radium can produce before cumulative skeletal deposition begins to cause systemic harm; both effects are far outweighed by the long-term radiation injury and consequent mortality.