• May 12:

    • Describes Radium as "sure cure" to all cancers
    • "husband gave her majority credit for discovery"
    • "motherly-looking scientist"
    • Focusing on her outfit
      • "dress was severely plain...loose-fitting tailored suit"

    Q: How does the news characterize the discovery of Radium? Can you pinpoint places of misogyny?

  • May 14:

    • Now refers to her as the discover of radium when she was previously referred to as the co-discover of radium
    • "unselfishness which has devoted... the results of her researches to the service of humanity"

  • May 15:

    • "how America took the lead"
    • "he was for abandoning the effort...but his wife's dauntless spirit refused to think of defeat"
    • A lot of explanation of the science

  • 4 years later, May 21:

    • Radium is dangerous!!!
    • "radium necrosis"
    • "radium workers"
    • cause of death possible: "wetting paint brushes with the tongue and lips when painting watch dials with luminous paint is the only possible cause for the disease so far discovered"
    • inhalation of fumes ??
    • a lot of confusion and debate...unclear what is specifically harmful about the radium and how people are dying from it

  • 3 years later (1928):

    • "took up watch dials and painted the blind numerals with a magic dye which made them glow at night"
    • "but, for years, these girls were unaware of the disease eating its way into their bones"
    • "the paint contained radium and mesothorium salts which continually shoot out Alpha, Beta, Gamma rays"

  • April 1st, 1932:

    • one man dies and he gets a whole write up about him???
    • drank radium water b/c he thought it would do him good....consumered out! companies tried to capitalize on radium in as many ways as they could...specific focus on marketing radium as a thing that improves your health
    • i guess he was a big deal (Byers) → millionaire sportsman

  • May 12, 1932

    • "doctors seek ban on radium water"
    • interesting that it took a millionaire sportsman dying for the public to come to the conclusion that radium was seriously dangerous. WHAT ABOUT ALL OF THE WOMEN?
    • "we shall immediately draft an amendment to the sanitary code prohibiting the indiscriminate sale of radium products in New York City"
    • "Mr. Byers's bones...showed a definite radium reaction, as did ashes of the heart and kidneys"

  • Radium Drinks, 1932

    • Byers fell and hurt his arm and was prescribed a drink called "Radithor" → distilled water w traces of radium + other radioactive substance mesothorium
      • It eased the pain!
      • recommended to friends + gave to his horses
      • died of radium poisoning
    • Dr. Joseph Steiner (saw many of the young women poisoned in U.S Radium Corp.'s factory)
    • the man who created Radithor is a man named William J. A Bailey and he had no scientific degree...

    "He is a scholarly-looking man with no scientific or medical degrees, no learned connections other than membership in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, in which he claims a protean interest in medical sciences, chemistry and physics."

    **THIS IS IMPORTANT

    • he is also connected to other purchasable radioactive substances...all about the money it seems
    • "Doctors thought that they had evidence that waters so treated would cure chronic arthritis, gout, neuritis, high blood pressure."
    • "After the young New Jersey women who painted watch dials with radium preparations began dying, experts denounced the use of radium internally...With radium applied externally and for short periods to destroy cancers they had no quarrel."
    • "Mayor Walker, with the persistence of a convinced selfmedicator, declared last week: "I won't stop using it.""

    *DISPOSABILITY !!! Women are disposable...they knew radium was poisonous in some capacity, yet they still continued to have the women work. labor. labor power. commodification of the young women workers...