Re: An historical report of radiation health effects to the Curies

[Muckerheide <muckerheide@mediaone.net>]

I guessed:

http://www.nobel.se/essays/curie/
and
http://www.vekoll.vein.hu/~devil/bead/curie.html

Also at:
http://pslab11.polsci.wvu.edu/students/JNewbraugh/webproject.htm

but in this case I assume it's a case of plagarism :-)"


John confirmed the first one :-)

Regards, Jim Muckerheide
muckerheide@mediaone.net
========================

Chris Alston wrote:
> 
> >Serious health problems of Marie and Pierre Curie (an excerpt from a source
> >on the Internet)
> >
> >        A week earlier Marie and Pierre had been invited to the Royal
> >Institution in London where Pierre gave a lecture. Before the crowded
> >auditorium he showed how radium rapidly affected photographic plates
> >wrapped in paper, how the substance gave off heat; in the semi-darkness
> >he demonstrated the spectacular light effect. He described the medical
> >tests he had tried out on himself. He had wrapped a sample of radium
> >salts in a thin rubber covering and bound it to his arm for ten hours,
> >then had studied the wound, which resembled a burn, day by day. After 52
> >days a permanent grey scar remained. In that connection Pierre mentioned
> >the possibility of radium being able to be used in the treatment of
> >cancer. But Pierre's scarred hands shook so that once he happened to
> >spill a little of the costly preparation. Fifty years afterwards the
> >presence of radioactivity was discovered on the premises and certain
> >surfaces had to be cleaned.
> >        In actual fact Pierre was ill. His legs shook so that at times he
> >found
> >it hard to stand upright. He was in much pain. He consulted a doctor who
> >diagnosed neurasthenia and prescribed strychnine. And the skin on
> >Marie's fingers was cracked and scarred. Both of them constantly
> >suffered from fatigue. They evidently had no idea that the radiation
> >could have a detrimental effect on their general state of health.
> >Pierre, who liked to say that radium had a million times stronger
> >radioactivity than uranium, often carried a sample in his waistcoat
> >pocket to show his friends. Marie liked to have a little radium salt by
> >her bed that shone in the darkness. The papers they left behind them
> >give off pronounced radioactivity. If today at the Bibliothèque
> >Nationale you want to consult the three black notebooks in which their
> >work from December 1897 and the three following years is recorded, you
> >have to sign a certificate that you do so at your own risk. People will
> >have to do this for a long time to come. In fact it takes 1,620 years
> >before the activity of radium is reduced to a half.
> >        Rutherford was just as unsuspecting in regard to the hazards as
> >were the
> >Curies. When it turned out that one of his colleagues who had worked
> >with radioactive substances for several months was able to discharge an
> >electroscope by exhaling, Rutherford expressed his delight. This
> >confirmed his theory of the existence of airborne emanations.
> >In view of the potential for the use of radium in medicine, factories
> >began to be built in the USA for its large-scale production. The
> >question came up of whether or not Marie and Pierre should apply for a
> >patent for the production process. They were both against doing so. Pure
> >research should be carried out for its own sake and must not become
> >mixed up with industry's profit motive. Researchers should be
> >disinterested and make their findings available to everyone. Marie and
> >Pierre were generous in supplying their fellow researchers, Rutherford
> >included, with the preparations they had so laboriously produced. They
> >furnished industry with descriptions of the production process. END OF
> >EXCERPT
> >
> >If you wish to know the source on the Internet, please contact me directly.
> >John
> > (e-mail: jrcamero@facstaff.wisc.edu)
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