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sleepless nights wondering whether her two
children's lives are poisoned too. Her sister Albina Maggia Larice
cannot walk at all. Her two children were born dead. Mrs. Edna Hussman
hobbles about her household duties. Katherine Schaub developed pains
in the skull. Her jaws crumbled; her features were curiously altered;
then her mind sickened. For some time she was confined in a hospital
for "nervous disorders." Her cousin Virginia Randolph is
numbered among the first thirteen victims. Her death certificate read
Vincent's Angina— Crippled Grace Fryer still sticks to her job. She
has worked in a Newark bank ever since leaving the radium company
seven years ago; still runs her department although her left elbow
cannot move and she wears a brace from neck to hips. Twenty operations
have been performed on her jaw. The Treatment. None. There is no way
known to medical science of removing the radium from the bones of these
doomed young women. Said Dr. Martland: "The deposits can be
removed only by cremating the bone and then boiling the ash in
hydrochloric acid." Keen observers suggested that the bodies of
all the unconscious martyrs be exhumed, given to hospitals and
laboratories for study, that this great tragedy might add its
contribution to scientific knowledge. Newspapers took these five dying
women to their ample bosoms. Heartbreaking were the tales of their
torture. Publicity hastened the case to trial through the lagging
courts. Some found doctors who thought the women might not die. No one
found a doctor who thought they might be completely cured. Said
Katherine Schaub: "Do you think getting married will help me? . . .
I don't buy anything. . . . I haven't any money. . . . I'm-worried. . .
. When I die I'll only have lilies on my coffin, not roses as I'd like.
. . . If I won my $250,000, mightn't I have lots of roses?"
*Literally, the Court of King's Conscience dating from the
early eighteenth century. Chancery had jurisdiction when there were no
forms of action by which relief could be obtained at law, in respect
of rights which ought to be enforced. Said King James, speaking in the
Star Chamber: "Where the rigour of the law in many cases will undo
a subject, then the chancery tempers the law with equity, and so mixes
mercy with justice, as it preserves a man from destruction."
*Ulcers caused by Vincent's organisms. Trench mouth is one type of
this disease.
