In the early 20th century, the world went ‘raving mad on the subject of radium’, according to George Bernard Shaw. The newly discovered element was considered a miracle cure, used to treat about 150 medical complaints. And it was fashionable: society ladies drank afternoon tea in rooms filled with radium vapours, and cosmetic companies developed hair tonics, face lotions and anti-wrinkle creams, all claiming to contain the element. Doramad toothpaste even boasted: ‘Your teeth will shine with radioactive brilliance.’
Of course, the discovery had its down sides. One American tycoon drank so much of the tonic Radithor that his bones began to disintegrate. Then the scientist who discovered the element, Marie Curie, died from aplastic pernicious anaemia brought on by radiation exposure. The only reason why there were not more deaths was the cost of producing radium. Most of the products marketed with the element contained no such thing.
The radium craze shows the human capacity to place faith in the material world. From medieval alchemists to modern collectors of healing crystals, people have believed that certain elements possess enchanted properties. The fact that these minerals emerge from the warm heart of the Earth, or even fall from the stars in meteorites, makes such arguments even more seductive.
In Under a Metal Sky, Philip Marsden traces his own fascination with the materials that make up this planet. As a child, he spent many happy hours looking for rocks that held sparkling stones or ancient ammonites, hinting that ‘another world lay hidden inside this one’. Now he travels east from his home in Cornwall, visiting the peat bogs of the Netherlands, the silver deposits of the Harz mountains, Czech spas offering radon-gas treatments and an Austrian copper mine, before ending his journey in the gold-filled mountains of Georgia.
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