Peterborough Historical Society
270 Brock Street K9H2P9 Peterborough, ON, Canada

Voices from Peterborough’s Past The article from which this excerpt is taken, credited to the Popular Science Monthly, appeared in the Peterborough Examiner on 1 October 1923 on the page entitled New and Interesting Facts from Science. It is an example of the wild and dangerous speculative claims, based on no scientific evidence whatever, that often follow the report-ing of genuine scientific discoveries, in this case the isolation of radium by Ma-rie Currie in 1898. The ar...ticle quotes a Dr. C. Everett Field, described as a radium therapist and Director of the Radium Institute of New York, that radium, in some cases, is the most ef-ficient medicine to give needed stimu-lus to the healing apparatus of diseased organisms, and may prolong life at least fifteen years. The article is silent on the credentials of Dr. Field or of his Radium Institute. It says nothing at all about the physician entrepreneurs who were marketing a home-use apparatus to dissolve radium in drinking water, as shown in the accompanying illustration. There were in the United States numerous diploma mills selling bogus medical credentials, to the frustration of the legitimate medical profession and scientific community. Of course, the marketing of miracle health remedies and products is not only a phenomenon of the past. Dale Standen and Ken Brown See more

REMINDER OF LOCATION OF MEETINGS. The day and location of the PHS monthly meetings in the fall will change back to the third Tuesday of the month, as it was before the Library closed for renovations. Because the Library will not reopen until later in the fall, our meetings for at least September and October will be in the Lion’s Centre, 347 Burnham Street, at the usual time, 7:30 p.m. The Lion’s Centre has parking on site, and is wheelchair accessible.