ABSTRACT
Radium is a rare, naturally radioactive element that is damaging to the body and expensive to extract. Radium was the first very high-cost medical technology, and its exorbitant price bestowed an elite status on its possessors and shut competing physicians and institutions out of the market. Producing radium for medical use mandated its industrial development. The limited availability of radium, along with Standard's high price, set in motion a competing radium business that would heavily involve the federal government and shape national mining policy. The two radium companies exemplified the ways in which medicine, business, and politics intersected in building a medical technology. The National Radium Institute and Standard Chemical Company each sought political and economic control of a natural resource and its clinical use. Governments played a significant role in spreading radium therapy. Radium initially dominated X-ray in the treatment of cancer.
