Waterbury evening Democrat., 1904-03-25
NONSENSE ABOUT RADIUn.

A somewhat startling article
 about radium, written by Cleveland
 Motfett, appears in March Success.
 MT Moffett presents some very start
 ling facts to prove that the mysterious metal will not accomplish one-half the wonders that are being claimed Tor 1t. MT Moffett went to Paris es- pecially to study radium and was a pupil of M. and Mime. Curie. He cer-
 talnly should know what he is writ ing about. Hessays in part:
 Oddly enough those failures to
 make good" seem only to stimulate our willingness to believe. We are
 like gamblers who reason that the red
 must turn up soon, and each new mes
 sage from the laboratory-anybody's
 laboratory-fnds. a cohort of zealous
 believers, especially if it be a message
 of healing to the sorely afflicted. There
 are the sadness and the wickedness of
 IL, for sufferers by tens of thousands
 put vain trust in these hasty an-
 nouncements, these deceptions of half
 knowledge, and believe that now, at length, they are to be rid of their ills. Think of the man whose wife is strick- en by cancer, and who is assured, on
 the authority of distinguished names (and this happens daily that radium will cure cancer, and then finds that
 there was some mistane; the writer misunderstood what the doctor said, or the doctor was oyer-sanguine, and the fact is that radium will only cure some cancers-sometimes! Think of the consumptives, millions of them,
 who are told Gas they have been tolO that radioactive air will conquer their 3n dNrF sin a. d1um kills germs, hence radioactive air taken into the lungs must destroy
 a germ disease. But again inyestiga- tion leads to disappointment; there is l need of more experiments; there is
 lack of radium, and anyhow the thing is doubtful. Radium may cure con sumption some day, or 1t may not; 1t certainly will not now, and the man who has the disease wants to be cured now-or let alone.
 I speak thus positively about the cure of consumption by radium be- cause 1 know of at least one shrewd speculator in human misery who pro poses soon to start q sort of rad4um consumption farm where he will ad- vertise to do wonders for affected lungs by means of radioactive air and handsome fees. No doubt if he sets up his establishment in Colorado
 or the Adirondacks, his patients may l be benefitted-with the radium ol
 without it. Eventually the radiunl | may do good, for the theory may prove sound, but the people should know that thus far there is an entire lack of evidence from reputable phy- | sicians to show that radium has ac. tually cured cases of consumption
 Years must pass before We can have any certain knowledge on the subject There must be a massing of evidence from many hospitals and time to take note of relapses. Think what slow l insidious disease consumption is. Re member the Koch consumption cure l which did not cure. Remember Whai 1 the A-rays were to. do for conSum D 1 ton, but did not do. , l Even should it ultimately be shown 1 that consumption may be cured Oy
 the use of radioactive air, there still
 remains the problem of finding a suf l fcient supply of radium to bestoN
 these precious properties upon the air
 Great quantities of this air would be
 needed-think of the army of con
 sumptiyes-and there is very little "a l dium in the world-only an ounce ol l so of the highly purified product ant | ludt IS cuOfuOuSly 6ApSlSlNe.. 10 Dt ] sure we read of radium deposits il 1 various parts of America, and we arc
 told that soon with better processes o1
 refining, the price will fall from a mil
 lion dollars a pound, or thereabouts to something reasonable. As a mat l ter of fact, the price of radium has
 been steadily advancing for the pas l six months, as is shown by figures l I have from the largest radium i'm l porter in New York, who informs mC l that quantity of radium ten milli grams) which to day sells for two hun ] dred dollars would have cost only sev enty-five dollars four months ago, ant
 only sixty dollars six months ago. Thi' l is because the Austrian government
 has refused to export any more of thu pitchblende refuse from it's uranium mines in Bohemia, and this refuse il l practically the sole radinm supply O
 radium in the world. The radium de l posits elsewhere, as in. Saxony,. Corn
 wall and Colorado, are far inferior t
 these, and, furthermore. America i far behind Trance in the practica business of refining radium. I'm I Frenchmen have worked at this fo two years or more. and have learne, by patient experiment to produce radi
 um of an intensity of 1,500, 900, where as our best result, so far as l cal learn, Is radium exactly one thou sandth as powerful, that is. of onl,