It has given excellent results in the treatment of certain skin
diseases, in cancer, etc. However it can have very baneful effects on
animal organisms. It has produced paralysis and death in dogs, cats,
rabbits, rats, guinea-pigs and other animals, and undoubtedly it might
affect human beings in a similar way. Professor Curie said that a
single gram of chemically pure radium would be sufficient to destroy
the life of every man, woman and child in Paris providing they were
separately and properly exposed to its influence.

Radium destroys the germinative power of seeds and retards the growth
of certain forms of life, such as larvae, so that they do not pass
into the chrysalis and insect stages of development, but remain in the
state of larvae.

At a certain distance it causes the hair of mice to fall out, but on
the contrary at the same distance it increases the hair or fur on
rabbits.

It often produces severe burns on the hands and other portions of the
body too long exposed to its activity.

It can penetrate through gases, liquids and all ordinary solids, even
through many inches of the hardest steel. On a comparatively short
exposure it has been known to partially paralyze an electric charged
bar.

Heat nor cold do not affect its radioactivity in the least. It gives
off but little light, its luminosity being largely due to the
stimulation of the impurities in the radium by the powerful but
invisible radium rays.