Radium Poisoning

In a hurry to learn what damage radium had done, one William W. Cardow, Waterbury, Conn., motor mechanic, had an autopsy performed on his wife a few hours after her death last week. Dr. Frederic Flinn, Columbia University radium poisoning specialist, was summoned by telegraph and he, with a Waterbury pathologist and dentist, took the body apart. They found that its jawbones were decayed, also parts of the skull, a bone in the right thigh, and four teeth. The heart and lungs were sound, but other internal organs yellow with rot.

The death of Mrs. Cardow, onetime dial painter for the Waterbury Clock Co., like the deaths and protracted illnesses of U.S. Radium Corp. scientists and minor employes (TIME, June 4, Nov. 26) is a social penalty for the public's demand to have night-luminous watches, clocks, gadgets.