Blue Glass at Spring Startles Ohio Doctor

1915

Fears Vanish When Radium is Found in Water

Benjamin Marshall of Paw Paw, Mich., is spending his leisure time in reading automobile catalogs and pricing Persian rugs.

The reason he engages in this pastime is because radium has been discovered in his back yard, according to a doctor from Ohio, who claims to know something about the stuff that sells for thousands of dollars per amount as big as a pinhead.

Two years ago Marshall and his mother came here and purchased a fruit farm on the outskirts of this village. On the property is a spring of sparkling clear water. Prior to their coming here, Mrs. Marshall was a chronic dyspeptic, subsisting only on the simplest of diets.

Helps Mother's Appetite

They had been here only a short time when Marshall noticed his mother's appetite had increased astonishingly and that she could eat anything with keen relish.

A glass was always left at the spring and always turned a light blue after slight use. One day when the Ohio doctor was visiting the Marshalls he noticed the blue glass and said:

"Marshall, you don't drink this water, do you?"

"Yes, we're really intemperate with it."

"And doesn't it make you sick?"

"I don't look seriously ill, do I?" asked Marshall, with a chuckle, as he exhibited his tongue.

Does a Little Probing

Then the doctor did some investigating and declared that the water contained radium.

"I thought it was cobalt at first," he said, "but if it were cobalt it would make you sick."

The doctor took several samples of the water back with him to test, and Marshall took to reading auto catalogs and pricing Persian rugs.

Physician Raps "Radium Hysteria"

1914

Says Element Alone Will Not Cure Cancer

Washington, Jan. 24. — "The radium hysteria is a disease that is likely to set back the proper treatment of cancer; and the inevitable failure of radium, as at present exploited as a cure, will add acute mental suffering to the physical tortures resulting from the disease."

This, was the declaration of Dr. Francis D. Donoghue, of Massachusetts, in a brief filed with the house committee on mines and mining endorsing Secretary of the Interior Lane's proposal to withdraw the radium bearing lands of the west from public entry.

Dr. Donoghue said further:

"Radium is not a cure and probably never will be a cure alone for cancer. Rather than develop the unknown and uncertain value of radium it would be better to establish institutes for the treatment of cancer by the combined methods of known values; first, thermotherapy, second, surgery, third, ray treatment by radium and X-ray; fourth, by the use of various forms of radio-energy."

The committee had under consideration a statement of Joseph M. Flannery, of Pittsburgh, owner of Colorado lands containing radium-bearing ores and opponent of Lane's plan, to the effect that the conservation policy not only would retard the proper development of the cancer cure, but would postpone cheaper radium.

Flannery told the committee that radium has a by-product, unnamed and undeveloped, which will revolutionize the yield of the soil and greatly lower the high cost of living. He asserts that the mixing of this by-product with fertilizer improves both the size and the quality of growing plants.

A cabbage, according to the witness, will improve 300 per cent in quality and size if grown with this fertilizer. Corn has been improved in experimental work 100 per cent; wheat, 65 per cent, beans, 33 per cent, and other vegetables have shown gratifying results, according to Flannery.