The Radioactive Corpse: The Strange Death of Eben Byers

“A more gruesome experience in a more gorgeous setting would be hard to imagine.” - Robert Hiner Winn

In September 1931, Federal Trade Commission attorney Robert Hiner Winn arrived at a magnificent mansion in Southampton, Long Island. The house was surrounded by wealth, comfort and carefully maintained gardens. Inside, however, its owner was slowly disintegrating. Eben Byers was only 51 years old, but much of his upper and lower jaw had been removed. His head was wrapped in bandages, holes were forming in his skull and speaking had become almost impossible. He remained mentally alert and understood exactly what was happening to him. A supposed medicine he had once praised and enthusiastically recommended to his friends was now destroying his skeleton from the inside. The drink was called Radithor. Its main ingredient was radium.

Eben McBurney Byers was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, on the 12th of April 1880. He came from an extremely wealthy family, attended Yale University and became a successful industrialist. He owned racehorses, maintained several expensive homes and regularly appeared in the society pages of American newspapers. He was also an outstanding golfer. Byers twice finished as runner-up in the United States Amateur Championship before finally winning the competition in 1906. He was rich, educated, athletic and well connected. He had access to the best doctors money could buy. Unfortunately, wealth can purchase excellent medical care, but it can also purchase industrial quantities of nonsense.

In November 1927, Byers was travelling home from the annual Yale and Harvard football match when he fell from an upper sleeping berth on a specially chartered train. He injured his arm, and although the injury was not life-threatening, the pain refused to disappear. It began to interfere with his golf and his normally energetic lifestyle. A Pittsburgh doctor named C. C. Moyar recommended that Byers try a new medicine called Radithor. It was sold in small glass bottles and advertised as a revolutionary treatment for pain, fatigue and general weakness. Byers began drinking it in December 1927.

At first, he believed it worked. He claimed that Radithor gave him a “toned-up feeling” and restored his energy. One bottle became two. Two became three. Over the next two years, he consumed an average of three bottles every day. It is estimated that he drank approximately 1,400 bottles in total. He also began recommending it to others. Byers sent cases of Radithor to friends and business associates and supplied it to women within his social circle. He even gave it to his racehorses. He became the product’s greatest unpaid salesman while his own bones quietly absorbed the poison.

To understand why an intelligent man willingly drank radium, it is important to understand the reputation radioactivity enjoyed during the early 20th century. Radium was mysterious, powerful and relatively new. It glowed in the dark and seemed to produce energy without any visible source. To the public, it appeared almost magical. Its genuine use in the treatment of some cancers helped create the belief that it could cure almost anything. Manufacturers began adding radioactive substances to toothpaste, beauty creams, chocolate, drinking water, tablets, heating pads and even contraceptives. People were encouraged to rub it onto their skin, place it against their bodies and swallow it.

For a brief and demented period in medical history, radioactivity was marketed in much the same way that miracle vitamins and anti-ageing supplements are marketed today. The difference was that vitamins rarely cause a person’s skull to develop holes. Radithor was created by William John Bailey, a talented salesman with a flexible relationship with the truth. Bailey had attended Harvard but left without graduating. This did not prevent him from presenting himself as a doctor and making medical claims that had little connection to reality.

Radithor consisted largely of distilled water containing radium-226 and radium-228. It was advertised as “Perpetual Sunshine in a Bottle” and “A Cure for the Living Dead.” Each tiny bottle cost one dollar, making it an expensive product at the time. The high price only increased its appeal among wealthy customers. It looked scientific, sounded modern and was sold with complete confidence. Bailey was not really selling medicine. He was selling the appearance of scientific progress, sealed inside a glass bottle.

The problem with radium is that the human body treats it in a similar way to calcium. Once swallowed and absorbed into the bloodstream, some of it becomes deposited inside the bones and teeth. From there, it continues to release radiation directly into the surrounding tissue. Radium outside the body can sometimes be blocked or avoided. Radium inside the skeleton cannot simply be washed away. It sits within the bones, damaging bone marrow, blood cells and nearby tissue. Radium-226 has a half-life of approximately 1,600 years. By drinking Radithor every day, Byers had transformed his own skeleton into a radioactive object that would remain dangerous long after his death.

By 1930, the supposed health benefits had disappeared. Byers began suffering from headaches, weight loss and severe pain in his jaw. His teeth loosened and started falling out. When dentists attempted to remove them, sections of the surrounding bone reportedly came away as well. Infections developed and parts of his jaw began to die. His face did not collapse in one sudden moment. The destruction was slower and considerably worse. His jaw was gradually dismantled through decay, surgery and the progressive death of the bone. Most of his upper jaw and large sections of his lower jaw had to be removed. The handsome sportsman who had once posed proudly with golf trophies could no longer speak clearly or eat normally.

Doctors eventually recognised the symptoms as radium poisoning. Similar injuries had already appeared among the women who worked with luminous radium paint in American watch factories. These women, later known as the Radium Girls, were instructed to shape their paintbrushes using their lips. Each time they did so, they swallowed a small quantity of radioactive paint. Their teeth fell out, their jaws rotted and many developed fatal cancers. Byers had not spent years placing a contaminated brush into his mouth. He had simply compressed the same process into a shorter period by drinking radioactive water several times a day.

The Federal Trade Commission was investigating Radithor when Byers became too ill to travel and give evidence in person. Robert Hiner Winn was therefore sent to interview him at his Southampton mansion. The contrast deeply disturbed Winn. He found a man surrounded by luxury whose body had become a medical ruin. Byers’ head was bandaged, his jaw had largely disappeared and the remaining bones of his skull were beginning to deteriorate. The Federal Trade Commission eventually ordered Bailey’s company to stop describing Radithor as harmless and to stop making false claims about its medical benefits. The decision came too late for Eben Byers.

He died in New York on the 31st of March 1932. He was 51 years old. His body had suffered extensive radiation damage, including severe destruction of the bones and bone marrow. His death received national attention. Byers was not an anonymous factory worker whose suffering could be ignored. He was a millionaire, a famous golfer and a member of America’s social elite. Radithor had consumed a man from the highest level of society, and newspapers suddenly found the dangers of radioactive medicine impossible to overlook.

Even after his death, those responsible refused to accept blame. Dr Moyar denied that Radithor had killed his patient. William Bailey continued defending his products. There is something particularly repulsive about the certainty of medical fraudsters. When a cure appears to work, they demand the credit. When the customer’s face begins to disappear, they blame the customer.

Byers was buried in the family mausoleum at Allegheny Cemetery in Pittsburgh. His coffin was lined with lead because his remains continued to emit radiation. In 1965, more than three decades after his death, his body was exhumed so scientists could study the amount of radium still present in his bones. The radiation had not disappeared. Byers remained what Radithor had made him, a radioactive human skeleton sealed away from the living. The product had been sold as perpetual sunshine, and in one grotesque sense the advertisement had been accurate. The energy placed inside his bones was going to remain there for centuries.

Eben Byers had money, education, sporting success and access to the finest society in America. None of it protected him from a small glass bottle, an impressive label and a salesman who understood that confidence often sounds remarkably similar to expertise. Today, Byers lies inside a lead-lined coffin beneath the city of Pittsburgh. William Bailey promised him perpetual sunshine. What he delivered was a darkness that will last for centuries.