Radithor worked great until his jaw fell off: the insane story of eben byers

Meet Eben Byers. He was the kind of man who seemed to have everything.

He was a wealthy American millionaire, the son of a powerful industrialist, a successful businessman and even a national golf champion. He lived the life of a 1920s playboy, surrounded by money, beautiful women, expensive parties and all the privileges that came with being rich.

Byers probably believed there was very little in the world that could hurt him.

Then came Radithor.

In 1927, Byers injured his arm during a train journey. His personal doctor recommended a strange new product called Radithor, a radioactive drink containing radium dissolved in water. At the time, radium was not widely understood by the public as something terrifying. Quite the opposite. It was associated with modern science, energy and the exciting future of medicine.

Byers tried it.

And he loved it.

He claimed that the drink made him feel stronger and more energetic. Instead of taking the recommended amount, however, he became obsessed with it. Before long, Byers was drinking several bottles every day.

And he didn't keep his enthusiasm to himself.

He sent bottles of Radithor to women he was involved with, encouraged his business associates to drink it and even gave it to his racehorses. To Byers, this wasn't poison. It was almost a miracle in a bottle.

Over the next few years, he consumed more than a thousand bottles of the radioactive water.

The problem was that radium behaves in the body in a particularly horrible way.

Chemically, radium is similar to calcium. The body can therefore mistake it for calcium and store it in the bones. Once there, the radioactive material continues releasing radiation from inside the skeleton.

Byers had effectively turned his own bones into radioactive storage tanks.

For a while, he seemed perfectly fine.

Then, around 1930, everything started to collapse.

Byers developed terrible headaches and severe pain. His bones and joints began deteriorating. His teeth started falling out. His health became so frightening that doctors eventually examined him more closely.

What they discovered was horrifying.

The radiation had severely damaged his skeleton. His bones were becoming weak and riddled with destructive lesions. The substance he had believed was giving him energy was slowly destroying him from the inside.

The worst damage occurred in his jaw.

The tissue and bone deteriorated so badly that surgeons eventually had to remove much of his lower jaw. By then, Byers could barely eat or speak normally. His body was literally breaking down because of something he had voluntarily consumed for years.

There was no miracle left.

Only radiation poisoning, massive physical damage and suffering.

Eben Byers died in 1932 at the age of 51. His death was attributed to the effects of radium poisoning, including bone cancer and severe damage to his body.

His story became one of the most notorious warnings about the dangers of radioactive patent medicines.

A famous headline associated with his death later captured the grotesque absurdity of the entire affair:

“The Radium Water Worked Fine Until His Jaw Came Off.”

Byers had spent years believing that modern science had given him something extraordinary.

Instead, he had been drinking a radioactive substance that was slowly accumulating in his bones.

His remains were eventually placed in a lead-lined coffin because of their radioactivity. Decades later, scientists examining his remains found that significant radioactivity was still present.

Radium-226 has a half-life of about 1,600 years.

So Eben Byers did not simply die from his obsession.

For centuries after his death, the radioactive material he had consumed remained inside the bones that were left behind.

His story is one of the strangest chapters in the history of medicine: a millionaire who had money, status and access to the best doctors of his time, yet trusted a fashionable miracle product so completely that he literally drank himself into a radioactive grave.

(please excuse my english, it's not my native language but i wanted to share this crazy piece of history with you guys)

Official and verified sources for this case:

• The Wall Street Journal (1932): Historical archive of the famous original article covering the death of eben byers and the radioactive scandal.

• Harvard University Historical Archives: Academic papers detailing the insane boom and marketing of radioactive medicine in roaring twenties america.

• National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI / PubMed): Official toxicological and medical report from 1965 exhumation proving his bones are still heavily emitting radiation.

• U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA): Government records on how the Radithor scandal officially started the first real laws and drug regulations in US history.