Man drank so much radioactive liquid that his jaw fell off and it ‘dissolved him from the inside out’

Eben Byers took the toxic medicine to try and remedy a minor injury

It’s the 1920s and you’re dealing with some pain – maybe you got it from playing sports, or you’ve had a hard fall. Well, why not fix that with some radium? It’ll alleviate some of the pain, and what’s the worst that could happen?

It turns out, a lot, including death.

100 years on, we know that this is one of the worst ideas ever for a multitude of reasons, from its radioactive properties to its ability to break down cells, or even the fact that it sharply increases someone’s chances of getting cancer.

But how was the world meant to know that in a time where private cars were still a rarity?

The answer is that it was known that Radium was a dangerous element from Marie Curie’s work in the late 19th century, but the medical world was still trying to find its use for health purposes.

In fact, a popular medicine from the time was Radithor, which was radium dissolved in water, and it was used as a healing tonic.

Eben Byers, an American socialite, was one of the product’s most eager users, using it to remedy his arm after falling on a train. Believing it made him better, he kept taking it.

In fact, he drank up to three bottles a day for two years until he suffered the long-term consequences.

Radium is not known for its health benefits nowadays (Getty Stock Image)

It was rumoured that Byers, in his fifties at the time, had also injured his member in the fall, and he believed the medicine helped him rise to the occasion as a ladies’ man.

But the medicine wasn’t even made by a doctor, it was made by William J.A. Bailey, a Harvard dropout that developed the toxic solution and sold around 400,000 bottled before being shut down by the FDA.

Byers allegedly bought around 1,400 of these from the fraudulent Bailey, and would pay the price.

To put everything into perspective, this was the age of radium-infused creams, soaps, and chocolate, among other things in the US.

Byers was none the wiser about its long term effects, and despite the case of the Radium Girls – female factory employees that became sick and died due to the use of radium paint – he kept using the medicine.

People back then believed that hot springs had healing powers due to the radon gas dissolved in the water, so concluded that it was the radioactivity causing it.

However, they failed to recognise that radon is very different to radium.

To involve science in the explanation, radon gas has a half-life of around three days, while radium’s is 1,600 years.

In the first couple of years of Byers taking Radithor, he was happy with the results, taking three times the daily dose of the toxic substance.

Soon, he fell violently ill – but instead of stopping, he continued drinking the substance as he continued to lose weight, have blinding pain in his jaw and get inflamed sinuses.

Then, his teeth started to fall out and his jaw started to fall apart.

Poor Eben Byers suffered grisly consequences (GL Archive / Alamy Stock Photo)

An X-ray confirmed that he had the same lesions on his jaw as the infamous Radium Girls, though Byers kept drinking Radithor as he thought it would help him feel better.

The FDA didn’t have much power to regulate Radium as it didn’t fall under food or drugs, but the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would eventually step in.

Ironically, their job was to ensure that products marketed as radioactive, were actually radioactive.

But as Byers’ health worsened and Radithor was at fault, the FTC opened an investigation, with an attorney visiting Byers’ home, finding him horribly sick in his home, literally rotting from the inside out.

Eventually, the FDA would gain control of the pharmaceutical industry, and as Byers told the FTC about Radithor on his deathbed, radium was then removed from the federally approved list of medicines.

It was stated at the time by Popular Science Monthly that Byers’ body contained ‘largest amount of radium ever found in a human being – more than thirty micrograms, enough to kill three men.’

The attorney that was sent to Byers’ house recalled: “He could hardly speak. His head was swathed in bandages. He had undergone two successful jaw operations and his whole upper jaw, excepting two front teeth, and most of his lower jaw had been removed.

“All the remaining bone tissue of his body was slowly disintegrating, and holes were actually forming in his skull,” he recalled.

What about the creator, Bailey?

He denied that Radithor cause Byers’ death to his grave, and when his body was exhumed 20 years later after dying of cancer, it was found that his corpse was ‘still hot’.