10. The history of scientific opinion regarding both tobacco and radium demonstrates how eagerly our species is to embrace an alleged curative without due diligence to ensure safety
Discovered in 1911, radium and its ability to seemingly treat previously incurable conditions was hailed as a medical miracle. However, in our rush to embrace the supposed scourge of lesions and carcinoma, medical experts wantonly overlooked the immense harm high levels of radiation has upon the human body. Quickly transforming from careful application to being freely accessible to the general public, radium became a staple ingredient in everyday household products across the United States, including bath salts, toothpastes, and face-creams, all for the alleged therapeutic benefits of the radioactive and potentially lethal metal.
Possessing a failure-to-success rate of 100 to 1 in treating cancers, delusional support for radium treatments continued well into the 1920s in the United States before dissipating at last in the 1930s after health scares. Offering a similar experience, tobacco, despite being harmful to the human body, was likewise presented as a positive and medicinally beneficial treatment. Claimed to provide numerous health benefits, tobacco smoke enemas were even widespread throughout Europe – especially London – during the 19th century. It was not until the Nazis launched the first modern anti-smoking campaign that independent scientific attention became increasingly focused on the negative influences of the drug.
