The Tablet the Government Tried to Seize

Name: The Tablet the Government Tried to Seize
Genre: Documentary

Arium's radioactive tablets forced federal prosecutors to confront the line between miracle marketing and dangerous fraud.

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Transcript

A $1 tin promised health, with measurable radium in every tablet.
Marie and Pierre Curie discovered radium in 1898, and the market grew infatuated.
Radium entered medicine, cocktails, paint, and consumer products before dangers were fully understood.
Arium came in a 42-tablet tin, with directions to take two with water.
Radium dial painters were mostly women, with workers including painters and handlers.
Alpha particles from radium decay excited zinc sulfide to provide continuous light.
Paint mixed radium-226 with zinc sulfide, creating continuous light for military dials.
In 1926, federal analysis found 8.58 nanocuries of radium per Arium tablet.
A 1927 analysis found radium and strychnine in Arium tablets.
In June 1926, federal prosecutors sought seizure of 56 packages and 135 boxes.
The government alleged Arium’s therapeutic claims were false and fraudulent.
Museum records cataloged Radithor as certified radioactive water containing radium and mesothorium.
The name mesothorium was also used for radium-228.
Years earlier, by 1923, a young luminous-dial painter was publicly reported with jaw osteomyelitis.
Complaints and lawsuits by former employees began spreading that same year.
In 1928, Elizabeth Hughes became a leading scientist in the dial-painters’ trial.
Elizabeth Hughes briefed a New Jersey Chancery Court on radium physics, chemistry, and injured painters’ measurements.
Prosecutors sought seizure and condemnation of Arium tablets.

Federal prosecutors could seize Arium's boxes, but no one could seize the radium already lodged inside the dial painters.

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