HAMMER, William J. - Radium, and other Radioactive Substances; Polonium, Actinium, and Thorium, ... properties and applications of Selenium and the treatment of disease by the ultra-violet light.

NY, van Nostrand 1903. Octavo publisher's cloth; viii,72pp and publisher's list; frontispiece and 39 illustrations, most from photos. An excellent, bright copy; two contemporary clippings on rear endpapers and some neat, inoffensive and easily removed pencilling. ¶ The first book on radium and, as befits an Edisonian inventor and pioneer of electric lighting, enthusiastic, even gung ho, in its embrace of these new discoveries. The book is based on a lecture, one of many Hammer gave in 1903, displaying to America his nine tubes of radium acquired in France by grace of the Curies; it describes their work and that of other researchers, his own experiments and outlines possible applications. Hammer's list of accomplishments would now be reviewed with mixed approbation: he proposed and used radium for treating cancer and tumours, curing a tumour in his own hand in 1903 but he was also one of the first people to be burnt by radium; he invented the selenium cell but also invented the radioactive luminous paints and colours that became the rage in such things as clock and watch faces which killed and disfigured so many of the workers who applied them.

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