Probably the first human death from acute radiation poisoning was reported at a Berlin Medical Society Meeting in 1912. A woman who had been treated for arthritis over a period of 16 days with injections of thorium-X, a short-lived isotope of radium, died within a month. The attending pathologist clearly recognized the cause of death. He reported, ''. . . one cannot doubt for a minute that we have here a case of death caused by mesothorium.'' But the danger signals went largely unheeded. The story of the painters of luminous watch dials has become a classic in the annals of industrial hygiene. Girls, employed as ? dial painters during the period 1914 to 1925, achieved a fine point on paint-laden brushes by shaping them with their lips. Minute amounts of radioactive material thus were ingested. -23, In 1922, -24, nine of these girls died with severe and unexplained anemia, and destructive lesions of jawbone and mouth. Many others have died of radium poison- ing over the years, although some are still alive. Also during the early part of the century, there was a fad of administering radium by injection and by mouth for ailments ranging from bad colds and broken bones, to insanity and old age. One Chicago physician gave radium to more than a thousand patients -- probably several thousand -- his own children included. z rr a - I. — ia. iL 7 ba * Lo . sh - on ~ a Ironically, these - -_ ~ _ - ra a : _