Have you read the Wizard of Oz books? Radium is presented there as a cross between a magical source of power (more or less correct, in hindsight) and a medical panacea (nope). This also occurs in old Conan the Barbarian stories.
Read old stories, and you can't help bumping into some very different worldviews.
Read old stories, and you can't help bumping into some very different worldviews.