ALL MATTER RADIOACTIVE
While certain substances have been designated as “radioactive,” it is not to be understood that these bodies alone emit charged particles, or radiant energy.
“All bodies whatever are a constant source of visible or invisible radiations, which, whether of one kind or the other, are always radiations of light” (Le Bon, “The Evolution of Forces,” p. 318, 1908).
Compounds of potassium, and also of rubidium, caesium and lanthanum, as shown by Campbell, Wood, McLennan, Kennedy, and other investigators, possess very high radioactive properties. While the atomic weight of potassium is only about 39, and of rubidium about 84, the typical radioactive elements have atomic weights ranging from 200 to 238. Of the 12 to 15 elements essential to life, potassium is the only one possessing distinct if minute radioactivity. “The activity of potassium may readily be demonstrated by means of the goldleaf electroscope. It is shown that Beta rays are emitted” (Burns). But potassium is 1000 times weaker than uranium, and 1,000,000,000 times weaker than radium, in the emission of Beta (negative) rays. Caesium and lanthanum emit Alpha (positive) rays.
Professor Dufour, the distinguished French scientist, has shown that even air that has been breathed emits radioactive particles. The presence of radioactive matter in the atmosphere has been shown to account for its electric conductivity. Thomson found (1906) that many specimens of water from deep wells contain a radioactive gas, and Elster and Gertel have found that a similar gas is contained in the soil.
It is probably safe to assert, with Le Bon, that all matter, “down to the absolute zero of temperature,” radiates electrified and more or less luminous particles, albeit they are invisible to the human eye.
It is because of its property of emitting negative electrons (Beta rays) that potassium is a necessary constituent of all living matter. It may, however, be replaced, under certain conditions, by other radioactive substances.
Prof. Barton Scammel, of the British Radium Society, gave it as his opinion (in 1922) that further experience in the proper uses of potassium salts and radium in solution would lead to the realization of a new golden age. He predicted, among other “good tidings,” life for 120 years in the bloom of youth, the “pep” of 25 years at 75, a third set of teeth, new hirsute coverings for erstwhile bald heads, muscles like Jack Dempsey’s.
Dr. C. Everett Field, of the New York Radium Institute, stated publicly, in backing up Scammel’s hopes and theories, that he thinks another ten years will see human life vastly prolonged as a matter of course by the use of radium. He said:
“We have ascertained beyond question that potassium salts are necessary to heart action, that they are slightly radioactive, and that radium can be substituted for them with a degree of success.