Radithor
- Daily oral consumption of Radithor will cure or substantially relieve more than 150 conditions, including dyspepsia, hypertension, impotence, lassitude, rheumatism, and other endocrinologic and metabolic complaints, through the stimulating action of dissolved radium-226 and radium-228 on the endocrine system. refuted
- Radithor's radium content is at safe 'mild radium therapy' levels; daily consumption presents no significant health risk to the recipient through cumulative skeletal radium deposition or radiation injury. refuted
- Daily Radithor consumption restores energy, vitality, and sexual function in male recipients, particularly those experiencing age-related decline, through the stimulating action of dissolved radium on the endocrine system. refuted
- Radithor and the Era of Mild Radium Therapy (1990)
- Federal Trade Commission Cease-and-Desist Order against Bailey Radium Laboratories (1931)
- Oak Ridge Associated Universities Health Physics Historical Instrumentation Museum: Radithor Entry (2010)
Radithor was the principal product of the ‘mild radium therapy’ commercial category in the late 1920s. Manufactured by Bailey Radium Laboratories of East Orange, New Jersey, it was sold as a tonic for over 150 conditions and consumed by tens of thousands of patients through cooperating physicians and direct mail order. The product was demonstrably fatal: the radium isotopes are bone-seeking alpha emitters that cause progressive skeletal destruction over years of consumption. Eben Byers’s well-documented case (1927-1932) made the lethality visible and precipitated the FTC’s December 1931 cease-and-desist order and the broader contemporary case against the radium-tonic industry. Together with the Radium Girls litigation it contributed to the legislative changes that produced the modern FDA. The intervention is the canonical historical example of a patent-medicine harm fatal at recommended doses; the case is the principal ‘died from own intervention’ record in this archive.