With the Curies’ discovery of radium in 1902, surgeons could beam thousandfold more powerful bursts of energy on tumors. Conferences and societies on high-dose radiation therapy were organized in a flurry of excitement. Radium was infused into gold wires and stitched directly into tumors, to produce even higher local doses of X-rays. Surgeons implanted radon pellets into abdominal tumors. By the 1930s and ’40s, America had a national surplus of radium, so much so that it was being advertised for sale to laypeople in the back pages of journals. Vacuum-tube technology advanced in parallel; by
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