100 years ago in Spokane: A local doctor was jazzed about his shipment of ‘curative’… radium?

About 100 milligrams of radium arrived in Spokane to be used as a “curative” by Dr. L.L. Stevens.

The Spokane Chronicle said that the supply compares favorably with the amount in use in Seattle and Portland, “as there are but a few ounces available in the world.”

Stevens recently returned from the East Coast, where he received specialized training in the medical use of radium. At the time, radium was believed to have curative properties.

“The use of radium has already become a necessity in certain diseases,” Stevens said.

The dangers of exposure to radiation were not yet completely understood.

From the crime beat: Two separate crimes in North Idaho – the holdup of the Citizens State Bank in Priest River and the assault of a California tourist – were committed by the same two young, unidentified criminals, according to authorities.

That morning, John A. Kinnear of California saw two men in the road near Spirit Lake. He stopped to offer them a ride, but they pulled guns. They ordered him out of the car and beat him so severely that he lost several teeth. Then they bound him, gagged him and threw him in the brush beside the road.

Then they took his car, his money and his camping equipment.

A few hours later, two gunmen meeting a similar description walked into the bank in Priest River, and ordered the clerks and customers into the vault. They fled with $2,000 in cash.

Two posses of 10 men each raced out of Priest River in pursuit, but so far the robbers were still at large.