Alaina Urquhart

Right.

Even before attempting to get pregnant and have children, many of the painters had noticed that they had very strange changes to their menstrual cycles.

Yeah.

And then when they began trying to get pregnant, they struggled to conceive and eventually learned that they were sterile.

Oh, my God.

Yeah.

And finally, many of the women who were able to conceive somehow were soon absolutely heartbroken by stillbirths.

by miscarriages, and by, quote, deformities in body structure of their babies.

The far-reaching consequences of this are astronomical.

Truly.

The first death came in 1922, but only after a long, and when I tell you excruciating, I mean excruciatingly painful illness by this person.

Oh, no.

A year earlier, 1921 in September, former dial painter girl Molly Maja had visited her dentist and she had to have a tooth removed because she had pain.

Weeks later, however, she was still experiencing pain and that socket had not healed weeks later.

So she went back to the dentist who diagnosed her with pyuria, which is an inflammatory disease of the gums, and started treating her for that.

Weeks later, however, it got worse and so had her intense lower jaw pain.

To everyone around her, it was very clear she was in terrible pain as her teeth were literally slowly and visibly rotting in her jaw.

For no reason at all.

Like, that everybody could see.

But the doctor could not figure out why this was happening.