Four days after she and her mother motored out of Edmonton, Alberta, and into Montana, Palmer slowly shuffles through the dampness of the old gold and silver mine in sneakers and a pink jogging suit. She looks happy. For the first time in five months, Palmer says, she can walk unaided, dress herself and enjoy her life. Believers claim this product of the disintegration of uranium is a miracle cure, and they make pilgrimages here for everything from diabetes to cataracts, bone spurs to hemorrhoids, warts to corns. Most come to treat the crippling disease of arthritis.
Experts say radon has no effect on arthritis.
They say the only relief comes from exercising, applying heat and cold, reducing stress and taking anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin. But all the cautionary tales in the world have not kept people away from folk remedies. Few are as unusual as the health mines of southwestern Montana. In the late 1800s the rugged, pine-blanketed country between Boulder and Basin, Mont., some 30 miles south of Helena, the capital, was a booming gold and silver mining region. Many of the mines operated until the 1940s and 1950s.