Fifty Years Before The Atom Bomb (1956)

From the May 1956 issue of the Socialist Standard

“I have no doubt," said Mons. Danyaz, “that a kilogramme of radium would be sufficient to destroy the population of Paris, granting that they came within its influence. Men and women would be killed just as easily as mice. They would feel nothing during their exposure to the radium, nor realise that they were in any danger, and weeks would pass after their exposure before anything would happen. Then gradually the skin would begin to peel off and their bodies would become one great sore. Then they would become blind. Then they would die from paralysis and congestion of the spinal cord." 

(Quoted by The Morning Leader, Monday, 11th January, 1904, in the Report from Paris of the discovery of Radium by Marie Curie from the Strand Magazine, January, 1904.)