I am not one who likes to share stories but if you check how people are willing to try things are not labelled safe and how they publicize these things on the internet, you will be so shocked at the extent at which people are willing to use things that haven't been cleared as safe on themselves or consume them just like they were in the years before medical innovation. I will decide to talk about a story of a person who ingested substances that were not safe for consumption in the days before we began to check medicine and food properly.
This is a story that dates back to the year 1927. It is the story of Ebenezer McBournie Byers. He had just arrived from watching The Game which was organized for ivy league universities like Harvard and Yale. The game was a championship game that's played each year since 1875. The schools compete in football tournament, and oe ther sports, and in 1927, Ebenezer McBournie Byers won a golf championship. Asides from playing golf, he also liked partying since he was from a wealthy home who has been featured in the wall street journal.
One day, he was traveling on his train and the train had a sharp turn which caused him to fall from the train bed where he was sleeping. When he woke up, he was unable to raise his arm as they were broken. Upon examination, it was wrapped around in bandaged with the hope that he recovered soon enough. He was given pain relief to help him with the pain but it looked like the pain wasn't going to go anywhere.
At a point, he couldn't move his body because he was in severe pains and needed a solution out of desperation. His desperation led him to Dr Charles Clinton Moyer who offered him a solution which he regarded as an all round solution to all types of illnesses and pains. He used the Elixir which was prescribed to him known as Radithor and it worked like a miracle drug as he was able to lift his hands and feel less pain.
In the quest to get completely better and more agile, he began to take lots of the elixir and was consuming bottles in a day. Soon he began to feel sick and it started with a mild headache, followed by pains in his entire body. Even with his pains, he didn't stop taking the elixir instead he increased the dose. It was certain that he didn't know what was causing the illness and this was why he kept using the elixir.
Radithor was made of Radium and Water and this is a toxic radioactive substance. Radithor made by William J. Bailey was a dropout from Harvard University, and he claimed that the elixir boosted the endocrine system. He said that the boosting of this system would lead to increased healing and cure from all illnesses and pain.
Picryl
This radioactive substance can lead to skin burn, cancer, and other radiation induced diseases. The Elixir had a combination of Radium 226 and Radium 228 mixed with distilled water. Over time, he began to experience serious issues in 1930 when his teeth began to rot, his skin began to dissolve in different areas and in areas around his jaw and his jaw even dropped off his face because the tissue around his mouth was completely rotten. He was unable to stand and his organs began to fail. This was because he had taken 3 times the lethal dose for radithor. He was said to have suffered from Radium Necrosis.
He wasn't actually the first to suffer from this because the radium girls also suffered from radium exposure and their skin began to necrose. The radium girls were workers who worked in the United States Radium Corporation and would handle radium on a daily basis, putting it on their lip with a brush so as to paint watches with the radioactive substance. They experienced similar necrosis as that of Ebenezer. In the year1932, Ebenezer died after suffering from Excruciating pain and the government closed down the business of the doctor producing Radium.
It is funny that even in our world, people are willing to try a lot of thing even when we have necessary authorities to check them out, people just want to try things without looking if it is okay for use.
Reference
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6611844/
https://mru.ink/radithor-the-radium-water-his-jaw-fell-off-eben-byers/
https://radioactivity.eu.com/articles/phenomenon/polonium_radium
https://mytapscore.com/products/radium-228-water-test
https://www.reclamosyquejas.cps.com.pe
https://www.nist.gov/pml/radiation-physics/radioactivity
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/166749901/ebenezer_mcburney-byers
https://www.fda.gov/about-fda/changes-science-law
https://www.cdc.gov/phlp/php/resources/health-insurance
https://academic.oup.com/jnci/article-pdf/82/21/1667/7802355/82-21-1667.pdf
https://case.edu/affil/MeMA/MCA/11-20/1991-Nov.pdf