Radium: Miracle. Medicine. Poison.Episode 61:32
The Ten Milligrams That Enchanted Japan
A tiny imported sample helped turn radium into hot-spring tourism, academic prestige, and a Japanese cure-all culture.
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Transcript
In 1903, Tanakadate brought only 10 milligrams of radium to Japan.
Five years earlier, in 1898, Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium.
Tanakadate Aikitsu introduced radium into Japan from Europe in 1903.
The tiny sample gave Japanese researchers their first chance to study radium firsthand.
During the 1910s, radium hot springs became fashionable in Japan.
The Japanese radium industry was supported by academic doctors from the Imperial University.
Soon, Japanese commercial culture offered radioactive pills, cosmetics, groceries, and drinks.
In 1916, Kosakai Fuboku called it an era of radium, or radiation.
With academic and industrial ties reinforcing one another, radium became a Japanese panacea.
Across the Pacific, American production reached 32.5 grams in 1920.
Fluorescent paint mixed radium-226 with zinc sulfide, making a continuous light source.
Hughes informed a New Jersey Chancery Court about radium physics and measurements. The court heard about measurements of injured dial painters.
During the early radium craze, radiation dangers were not fully understood.
Japan's national dream was not an exception; across the Pacific, entrepreneurs were preparing to sell radiation by the jar, tablet, and glass.
Where it leaves off
Arium was sold in tins containing 42 tablets. Japan's national dream was not an exception; across the Pacific, entrepreneurs were preparing to sell radiation by the jar, tablet, and glass.
Sources
- Radium traffic: radiation, science and spiritualism in early twentieth-century Japan - PMCpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govsecondary
- Introduction - Radium: Topics in Chronicling America - Research Guides at Library of Congressguides.loc.govsecondary
- The National Bureau of Standards and the Radium Dial Painters - PMCpmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.govsecondary
- Arium Radium Tablets (ca. 1925) | Museum of Radiation and Radioactivityorau.orgsecondary
- R. W. Thomas, the Revigator and the Thomas Cone | Museum of Radiation and Radioactivityorau.orgsecondary
- Années folles du radium · Années folles du radium · Musée Curie · Musée Curiecuriotheque.musee.curie.frsecondary
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