The alleged microbe killer 

One of the most successful frontier quacks, from a commercial standpoint, was William Radam, a Prussian immigrant who migrated to Texas in 1872 and established Pleasant Valley Nurseries in and around Austin. He was a prosperous and contented family man until he came down with malaria, followed in short order by rheumatism, sciatica and tuberculosis. That’s part of the story he told, and some of it is true. 

After two of his children died in infancy, Radam swore off doctors and started researching medical journals. He read of recent discoveries by noted European scientists Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch that identified microscopic germs as the cause of disease. That bit of knowledge inspired Radam but a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing.. 

The articles triggered a connection in Radam’s mind between the plants he had tended most of his life and the diseases now threatening to make him a goner. Disease, he reasoned, is fermentation “and fermentation without microbes cannot occur.” Having noticed that the air seemed cleansed and he felt better after a lightning storm he resolved to capture lightning in a bottle and sell it for big bucks.

Lightning in a bottle, according to Radam’s patent, consists of water, powdered sulphur, nitrate of soda, black oxide of manganese, sandalwood and potash treated in an oven. He added a bit of wine for color, named the final product Microbe Killer, and sold it under that name. 

 In his patent application Radam said nothing about the mixture’s ability to cure disease, claiming only that it would “kill all fungus, germs, parasites and other matter producing fermentation or decay” and would make a great food preservative. 

Radam drank copious amounts of the stuff for six months, declared himself disease-free, and wrote letters to the Austin paper extolling Microbe Killer as a cure for every disease known to mankind. Many of his friends, apparently a sickly lot, wrote in with similar testimonials.

In 1888, Radam financed construction of the Koppel building at 322 Congress Avenue in Austin to house his first Microbe Killing Company. Two years later, he left podunk Austin for New York City where he set up a laboratory and main office and settled into a Fifth Avenue mansion with an expansive view of Central Park. By then the former nurseryman owned 17 American factories with expansion to England and Australia on tap. He ran advertisements in popular magazines and newspapers and published a best-selling book, Microbes and the Microbe Killer. 

But not everybody bought what Radam was selling. A physician and pharmacist named R. G. Eccles declared that Microbe Killer was just water mixed with miniscule amounts of hydrochloric and sulfuric acids. Radam countered that he “never bought nor used one dollar’s worth of sulfuric or muriatic acid to make my Microbe Killer.” 

The two men commenced suing each other back and forth for libel. Radam lost the first round, mostly because of his own bumbling testimony. The judge in a second trial directed the jury to enter a verdict in favor of Radam on technical grounds, which netted him a $500 judgment. Not that he needed the money. 

William Radam was 58 years old and one of the richest men in America when he died of a heart attack in 1902. Too late he realized that heart disease was immune to his Microbe Killer. So was every other disease. A series of investigative articles in Collier’s magazine exposed Microbe Killer as worthless but Radam’s widow, Ida Haenel Radam, continued to rake in large sums of money for ten more years. 

The 1912 passage of the Sherley Amendment to the 1906 Pure Food and Drugs Act was the beginning of the end for Microbe Killer. Radam’s concoction, and others like it, inspired the amendment,  which decreed that any misbranded label was also illegal. 

Federal agents raided a freight car on a train bound for Minneapolis and confiscated 539 boxes and 322 cartons of Radam’s alleged magic potion. The FDA estimated that the entire load had cost $25.86 to produce and was worth more than $5,000 in the market place but not a plug nickel to the people who paid $3 a gallon for it. 

Today, you can get an empty Microbe Killer jug online for $200, more or less, which is a fair price when you consider that the jugs were always more valuable than the liquid they contained.