The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off
news article · 1990
SUMMARY
The Wall Street Journal retrospective piece on Eben Byers and Radithor that established the canonical popular headline for the case. The article was occasioned by the publication of Roger M. Macklis's *JAMA* paper in August 1990 and traced the case through Byers's death, the FTC action against Bailey Radium Laboratories, and the case's contribution to the strengthening of US patent-medicine regulation. The headline is widely cited in subsequent popular and academic coverage of the case and is the principal example of the 20th-century retrospective popular-press coverage of the radium-tonic era.
NOTES
The Wall Street Journal headline ‘The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off’ is the canonical popular-press encapsulation of the Radithor case. The article itself is a retrospective summary published in conjunction with the Macklis 1990 JAMA paper, not contemporary 1932 coverage. The piece remains the single most widely circulated popular summary of the case and is referenced in nearly all subsequent popular and academic treatments. Full text is held in the WSJ archive and in major newspaper-archive databases (ProQuest Historical Newspapers).