The Curies 69 



of cancer. In Britain a Radium Commission has been 

 formed to deal with the problem. This has its offices in 

 Adelphi Terrace, London. So enormous is the cost of 

 radium that a pound of it (if any such amount were 

 obtainable) would be worth more than five million 

 sterling. It is indeed the most costly thing in the world 

 and far above the price of diamonds or rubies. 



Yet it is possible that in the depths of the earth there 

 may exist great stores of this immensely precious and 

 powerful substance. Years ago Sir Ernest Rutherford 

 suggested that the heat of the earth may be due not to 

 the fact that it is a molten mass which has been slowly 

 cooling for millions of years, but to the presence, in its 

 heart, of large quantities of radium. For the heat given 

 off by radium is very great ; it is estimated that thirty- 

 two tons of radium used in the furnaces of the Mauretania 

 would propel that great ship at the same speed as the 

 hundreds of tons of oil fuel used daily during her voyages 

 — and that it would do so indefinitely. 



Yet even supposing that we were to find some method 

 of procuring radium cheaply and easily, it is doubtful 

 whether we could use it industrially, for the danger of 

 handling it would be terrible. A single pound of radium 

 placed in an ordinary room would probably blind and 

 kill any living creature that came near it. 



