They even gave a detailed hypothesis of what they thought was happening inside the women as a result of their exposure. Radium, they noted, had a ‘similar chemical nature’ to calcium. Thus radium ‘if absorbed, might have a preference for bone as a final point of fixation’. Radium was what one might call a bone-seeker, just like calcium; and the human body is programmed to deliver calcium straight to the bones to make them stronger . . . Essentially, radium had masked itself as calcium and, fooled, the girls’ bodies had deposited it inside their bones. Radium was a silent stalker, hiding behind that mask, using its disguise to burrow deep into the women’s jaws and teeth.
As Drinker had read in scientific literature, radium, since the beginning of the century, had been known to cause serious flesh wounds. It was why workers exposed to large amounts of radium dressed themselves in heavy lead aprons and wielded ivory-tipped tongs; why lab workers at Radium Dial were restricted in the amount of time they could spend in its presence. It was why Dr von Sochocky didn’t have the tip of his left index finger anymore; why Dr Leman, the chief chemist in his former company, had lesions all over his hands; why von Sochocky’s partner Willis no longer had a thumb. The impact it had externally could easily kill a man, as Pierre Curie had noted back in 1903.
That was the effect it had on the outside. Now imagine the impact of it, once it had craftily concealed its way inside your bones.
‘Radium, once deposited in bone,’ wrote Drinker in his report, ‘would be in a position to produce peculiarly effective damage, many thousand times greater than the same amount outside.’
It was radium, lurking in Mollie Maggia’s bones, that had caused her jaw to splinter. It was radium, making itself at home in Hazel Kuser, that had eaten away at her skull until her jawbones had holes riddled right through them. It was radium, shooting out its constant rays, that was battering Marguerite Carlough’s mouth, even at this moment.
It was radium that had killed Irene, and Helen, and so many more . . .
It was radium, the Drinkers said, that was the problem.
The doctors enclosed a table of their test results of the workers and, crucially, analysed them. ‘No blood [from the USRC employees],’ they wrote, ‘was entirely normal. These same findings were noted in previous reports by the Life Extension Institute, but the Institute did not appear to have been aware of their meaning.’ While some employees registered marked changes in their blood, other results were noted to be ‘practically normal’. But not one worker had wholly normal blood; not even a woman who had been with the firm for only two weeks.
The Drinkers commented specifically on the case of Marguerite Carlough, whom they had interviewed on their very first visit to the studio: the case at the root of all Roeder’s present woes. And here, for a moment, they dropped the detached tone that characterised the rest of the technical report. ‘It seems to us important to express our opinion,’ they wrote, ‘that Miss Carlough’s present serious condition is the result of her years of employment in your plant.’ They wanted, they said, ‘to call your attention to the fact that this girl needs the best of medical attention if she is to survive’.
Almost a year on, the company had not lifted a finger to help her.
The report finished with various safety recommendations, ‘precautions you should take at once’. Ever since this thing had blown up in Roeder’s face, there seemed to be nothing but safety recommendations. He had recently instructed Viedt to put some of them into practice: ‘This is much more economical,’ he’d told his deputy in a memo, ‘than paying $75,000 lawsuits.’
Roeder had been aghast at the Drinkers’ report by the time he’d finished reading. Surely it couldn’t be true. He had taken a few days to collect his thoughts and then, over the course of several weeks in June 1924, he had exchanged further correspondence with Dr Drinker. Seeming to forget the doctor’s undoubted brilliance – the very attribute that had driven Roeder to recruit him in the first place – Roeder now pronounced himself ‘mystified’ by the doctor’s conclusions and longed to ‘reconcile in my own mind the situation that you have found’. Yet, perhaps anticipating an offer from Drinker to discuss it further, Roeder stressed that he was far too busy to meet him; so much so that he was ‘contemplating giving up my Saturdays which I usually spend at the seashore during the summer’ to spend more time at work.
On 18 June 1924, the day that Harold Viedt wrote to the Department of Labor to share the company’s sleight-of-hand summary of the Drinker report, Roeder and Drinker were still in debate by letter. In the company president’s correspondence of that date, he wrote dismissively to Drinker, ‘Your preliminary report is rather a discussion, with tentative conclusions, based on evidence which is circumstantial.’
Of course, the doctor had responded. ‘I am sorry our report impressed you as preliminary and circumstantial and fear that reiteration can do little to alter such an impression.’ Yet he stated once again: ‘We found blood changes in many of your employees which could be explained on no other grounds.’
The two had then got into a heated dispute, with letters flying back and forth. Roeder was adamant: ‘I still feel that we have to find the cause.’
Privately, Drinker was surprisingly understanding about the president’s position. He wrote to an associate: ‘The unfortunate economic situation in which he finds himself makes it very hard for him to take any stand save one in regard to radium, namely that it is a harmless, beneficent substance which we all ought to have around as much as possible.’ He added: ‘It does not seem to me that [the company can] be blamed’ for what had happened to the girls.
The doctor’s standpoint may in part have been due to the discipline in which he worked: industrial hygiene. Until 1922, Drinker’s department at Harvard was wholly funded by business; even in 1924, commercial firms contributed money for special projects. To offend such a prestigious institution as USRC would not be wise. As one industrial physician put it: ‘Are we in industry to help carry out some soft, silly, social plan? Are we in industry to buy the goodwill of the employees? No. We are in industry because it is good business.’
Thus, after a final exchange of views between Roeder and Drinker, during which – perhaps to keep the doctor at bay – Roeder made sure to mention ‘the almost complete closing down of our application plant for lack of business’, it had all gone quiet. The full report had never been published; the Department of Labor had been satisfied with the company’s version of events; the current dial-painters were no longer listening to hysterical rumours and were back at work; and Arthur Roeder had been able to get on with business as usual.
Until now.
Until Katherine Wiley had stuck her nose in where it wasn’t wanted.