Science: Tale of Three Tubes

From the Mayo Clinic came a breathless story of a hunt for three lost tubes of almost priceless radium.

The tiny tubes, an inch and a quarter long, had been thrown out with a trayful of dressings. The search built up gradually. Staff members, using a Geiger-Müller Counter (an instrument for detecting radioactive rays), successively poked into the incinerator, the laundry, the garbage, wastepaper baskets, the hospital floors, roofs, foundations. No luck.

The hospital, thoroughly alarmed, called a council of its whole biophysical staff, insurance investigators, city engineers. Soon they were in full cry through the town, taking Geiger-Müller soundings in doctors’, nurses’ and patients’ homes, the city dumps, the city hog farm, the sewers. The hospital staff began to think up desperately ingenious tactics. New manholes were opened, miles of sewer explored. Since water screens radium rays, the searchers debated draining the sewers or dragging sensitive film enclosed in a rubber hose through the water.

On the 54th day a ray-detecting electrometer struck pay dirt. The city engineer built a tricky special scraper, probed, scratched, and out of a heap of sewer muck hauled the three precious tubes.