Facebook X YouTube Instagram TikTok NetGalley
Google Books previews are unavailable because you have chosen to turn off third party cookies for enhanced content. Visit our cookies page to review your cookie settings.

Seduced by Radium (Hardback)

The Making of a Familiar Commodity

P&S History > Social Science & Culture > Anthropology & Sociology

Imprint: University of Pittsburgh Press
Pages: 308
ISBN: 9780822947066
Published: 25th October 2022
Casemate UK Academic

in_stock

£25.50


You'll be £25.50 closer to your next £10.00 credit when you purchase Seduced by Radium. What's this?
+£4.99 UK Delivery or free UK delivery if order is over £40
(click here for international delivery rates)

Order within the next 8 hours, 19 minutes to get your order processed the next working day!

Need a currency converter? Check XE.com for live rates



The discovery of radium by Marie and Pierre Curie in 1898 eventually led to a craze for radium products in the 1920s until their widespread use proved lethal for consumers, patients, and medical practitioners alike. Radium infiltrated American culture, Maria Rentetzi reveals, not only because of its potential to treat cancer but because it was transformed from a scientific object into a familiar, desirable commodity. She explores how Standard Chemical Company in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania - the first successful commercial producer of radium in the United States - aggressively promoted the benefits of radium therapy and its curative properties as part of a lucrative business strategy. Over-the-counter products, from fertilizers to paints and cosmetics to tonics and suppositories, inspired the same level of trust in consumers as a revolutionary pharmaceutical. The radium industry in the United States marketed commodities like Liquid Sunshine and Elixir of Youth at a time when using this new chemical element in the laboratory, in the hospital, in private clinics, and in commercial settings remained largely free of regulation. Rentetzi shows us how marketing campaigns targeted individually to men and women affected not only how they consumed these products of science but also how that science was understood and how it contributed to the formation of ideas about gender. Seduced by Radium ultimately reveals how innovative advertising techniques and seductive, state-of-the-art packaging made radium a routine part of American life, shaping scientific knowledge about it and the identities of those who consumed it.

There are no reviews for this book. Register or Login now and you can be the first to post a review!

Other titles in University of Pittsburgh Press...