What Happens When You Don't Know the Dangers of Radiation

Today we know about the dangers of radiation, but that wasn't the case in the 19th century. When radium was discovered by Marie Curie and her assistant G. Bémont, it gained attention for reasons like being a "new element" and its "property of glowing in the dark." Because of these characteristics, a misconception arose that its glow was beneficial to the human body and could even restore youth. Consequently, a craze swept through society for exposing oneself to radium's glow. The problem wasn't just that radium was ineffective; when studying cancer at the time of its discovery, it was observed that cancer cells died when exposed to radium radiation in patients. This finding was so groundbreaking that it was believed cancer had been conquered. As radium proved effective against the mysterious disease of cancer, a near-religious faith in radium rapidly took hold of the medical community. The issue was that it didn't just kill cancer cells. Other cells also die when exposed to radiation. However, people believed they were curing cancer because the cancer cells died first. As a result, the number of people suffering from radiation exposure surged, and later, the dangers of radium became known.