Following the experimental golden rule, Robert Abbe made his first experiments with radium on himself. Abbe positioned the tube of radium at different points on his arm, secured it with a rubber band, and left it in place each day for thirty minutes in one spot, in another for an hour, and in a third location for two hours. He then recorded his observations, as shown by the page to the left. Abbe had some sense of the drama of his experiments; note the auspicious captioning at the top of the page (although he seems to have initially forgotten to write in the year). 

Eventually, Abbe noticed a growing redness and tenderness in the exposed areas, beginning with the skin that had received two hours' exposure. The doctor would later repeat the experiments when he succeeded in obtaining newer, more powerful radium samples. His second radium self-experiment used the "300,000 x" sample obtained from Eimer & Amend, and Abbe observed that it produced an immediate inflammation, underlining the word in his notes. Abbe eventually published several papers reporting the results of these early experiments, and, as the second typed page shows, he continued to monitor and make notes on the exposed surfaces in subsequent years. The entry for 1936, for example, notes that the exposed areas still showed three scars, "visible as slight depressions." Click on the image, and view the full record, to see a few more pages of Abbe's notes on his self-experiments.