“Henri Becquerel has verified, by an unpleasant working experience, the reality that the rays of radium have an energetic action on the skin. Obtaining carried in his waistcoat pocket for about 6 hrs a tiny sealed tube made up of a couple of decigrammes of intensely lively radiferous barium chloride, in ten days’ time a crimson mark corresponding to this tube was apparent on the skin the skin peeled off and remaining a suppurating sore, which did not mend for a thirty day period. Pierre Curie has experienced the same working experience immediately after exposing his arm for a more time time period to a considerably less lively specimen.”

—Scientific American, August 1901

Far more gems from Scientific American’s first a hundred seventy five several years can be discovered on our shiny anniversary webpage.