Carter Roy

He says it invigorates him and makes him a stronger athlete.

Radithor markets it that way too.

It's basically the weedy cereal of the 1920s.

If you're thinking, hey, Carter, isn't that dangerous?

You're absolutely right.

Eben will eventually die in 1932, just five years after he started drinking Radithor.

By that time, his jaw has disintegrated.

What the public doesn't know is that radium is toxic.

In 1903, Pierre Curie told an interviewer he wouldn't dare be in the same room as a large quantity of radium.

It would burn his skin, destroy his eyesight, probably kill him.

Marie Curie suffered radiation burns handling the stuff.

She eventually dies from radium exposure.

So the scientists know.

They've known for years.

But in 1917, there's no internet, no evening news the way we know it today.

Scientific journals don't reach the average American, and the companies selling radium products are spending a fortune on advertising.

The marketing is so good that it drowns out the science.

As far as the public is concerned, radium is magic.

and one scientist figures out how to profit from that magic.

He is a doctor named Sabin von Sashaki.