Eben McBurney Byers was a wealthy American socialite, athlete, and industrialist who earned notoriety in the 1930s after a gruesome illness and death caused by radiation poisoning resulting from the consumption of a popular patent medicine made from radium dissolved in water.

He was born in 1880, the son of industrialist Alexander Byers, and was educated at St. Paul's School and Yale College, where he earned a reputation as an athlete and ladies' man. Byers eventually became the chairman of the Girard Iron Company, which had been created by his father, and was the U.S. Amateur Golf Champion of 1907. In 1927, while returning via chartered train from the annual Harvard-Yale football game, he fell from his berth and injured his arm. Byers complained of persistent pain and a doctor suggested that he take Radithor, a patent medicine manufactured by William J. A. Bailey. Bailey was a Harvard College dropout who falsely claimed to be a doctor of medicine and who became rich from the sale of Radithor, which he made by dissolving radium in water to high concentrations, and which he held could cure many ailments by stimulating the endocrine glands. He offered physicians a 17% rebate on the prescription of each dose of Radithor.

Byers began taking enormous doses of Radithor, which he believed had greatly improved his health. In the process he probably subjected himself to more than three times the lethal radiation dose. By 1930, when he stopped taking the remedy, he had accumulated significant amounts of radium in his bones, leading to fractures, lesions, and eventually the loss of most of his jaw and to the appearance of holes in his skull. He died in 1932.

His illness and death received much publicity, leading to a heightened awareness of the dangers of radiation poisoning, and to the adoption of laws that increased the powers of the FDA. William Bailey was never tried for Byers's death, but his business was shut down by the Federal Trade Commission.

Reference

• Roger M. Macklis, "The Great Radium Scandal," Scientific American, 269(2), pp. 94-99, Aug. 1993.