Trimble Lecture - “Making Radium Kinky: The Epistemology of the Familiar”

A startling woman wears a silk robe and seemingly nothing else. She flashes her naked shoulder, her hands elegantly reach his, while her bare legs touch his thighs. She looks young, elegant, inviting. He, an older man, is sitting at an armchair, fully dressed and at her mercy. The message in the Vita Radium Suppositories advertisment for sexually impotent men is clear: “He realizes that happiness depends on his ability to perform the duties of a REAL MAN…Now is the time to act! Today! RIGHT NOW! Tomorrow may never come.”

In the early twentieth century, radium was poised to affect the sexual lives of men and women, revolutionize the American household, and change medical clinics. Advertisements promised that radium fertilizers would beautify gardens; radium paints would glow from the faces of wristwatches and clocks; radium cosmetics would woo men; radium suppositories would restore their sexual vigor and virility; and radium needles would eradicate cancerous tumors. Once considered exclusively a scientific object, radium in the early twentieth century U.S. was quickly transformed to a kinky commodity that appeared in numerous formats and in different contexts. It was provokingly advertised and widely consumed, shaping social attitudes, gender identities, as well as medical and laboratory practices. In turn, radium commodities often returned to the sites of their production—the scientific laboratory—dictating lines of research and constructing scientific facts. This talk is a presentation of the newly published book Seduced by Radium and is about the process of radium becoming a familiar and desirable commodity.