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A concise popular account introduces radioactivity and describes how radium emits penetrating rays, explains its effects on living tissue and its use in medicine and industry, surveys experiments and anecdotal claims about therapeutic springs and radiotherapy for cancer, and outlines the physical mechanisms by which radiation ionizes matter. It discusses the discovery and isolation of radium, the difficulties and expense of production, the element's role in estimating the Earth's age, procedures for conversion and decay chains, and the geological sources and extraction methods that supply radioactive materials.
Punctuation, hyphenation, and spelling were made consistent when a predominant preference was found in the original book; otherwise they were not changed.
Simple typographical errors were corrected; unbalanced quotation marks were remedied when the change was obvious, and otherwise left unbalanced.
This book uses terminology that was current at the time of publication, and reflects the state of science as it was understood by the author at that time.