Radium Ore Revigator

[From The Journal of the American Medical Association, November 21, 1925]

The Propaganda for Reform Department

RADIUM ORE REVIGATOR

Capitalizing on Public's Ignorance of Radium and
Radioactivity

A huge traffic has been developed during the past four of five years in the sale of so-called radioactive pads, consisting of a few cents' worth of crude ore having a low grade of radioactivity and possessing no more therapeutic value than do the luminous figures on the dial of a two-dollar watch.
Still more recently a new scheme has been developed; that of selling water jars containing, ether as a part of the walls of the jar or as an accessory to the jar, some low-grade radioactive ore. Cover, Revigator Ad Pamphlet (4K) These jars are sold under the general claim that they render water that is put into them radioactive and that this radioactive water will make you well if you are sick and keep you from getting sick if you are well.

"TIRED" DRINKING WATER

One of the most widely and extensively advertised of these devices is known as the "Radium Ore Revigator," put out by a California company. As is commonly the case with latter-day pseudo-medicine having large financial resources behind it, the Revigator concern put forward an hypothesis for which there is no foundation and proceeds to build its claims upon it. The thesis in this case is that the drinking water of today has a "basic fault." It is "denatured"; more than that, it is "tired or wilted water." If we are to believe the Revigator concern, the water that one hundred and nine million out of the hundred and ten million people of the United States drink is woefully lacking in an essential element. To quote from the Revigator advertising: "More illness is caused by improper water than any other reason and largely because radioactivity is lost from our daily supply of drinking water." Hence the Radium Ore Revigator to the rescue!

"By the patented composition of highly selected and scientifically compounded radium ores of which the Revigator is made, this lost element is perpetually restored to all drinking water placed therein."

The public is told, further, that the tired, wilted denatured water that they are drinking lacks the "vigor gas" and the "vigor element" which "is just as necessary a part of water as hydrogen or oxygen." The Revigator "revigorates or restores natural vigor to drinking water."

Revigator, ca. 1925
14 1/2" x 10"

Revigator (3K)

At the Oak Ridge Associated Universities' (ORAU's) Historical Health Physics Instrumentation and Radioactive Quack Cures Collection, see

Radioactive Curative Devices and Spas by Paul W. Frame and
Radioactive Quack Cures - recently expanded on-line exhibit

Don't miss our radium case and radium links!

Article and red pamphlet cover from the American Medical Association's Historical Health Fraud & Alternative Medicine Collection.

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updated 04/13/2013