For many middle-class patients, the ability to purchase small quantities of radium water at a physician’s office brought emanation therapy within financial reach for the first time. Advertisements for the devices included testimonials like that of Francis E. Park, of Stoneham, Mass., who found that courses of emanation therapy as short as one or two weeks could provide “a remarkable uplift of nerve strength” for patients suffering from allergies: “the irritating matter, whatever it may be, no longer causes trouble.” Park's patients were middle-aged professionals—people wealthy enough to afford the occasional treatment for hay-fever (at Saubermann’s suggested rates, a prescription would have gone for roughly the modern-day equivalent of between $100 and $150) but not enough to obtain their own home emanators.

For physicians, emanators represented a source of ongoing revenue. Patients had to come in regularly, and most could not fill their "emanation" prescriptions at an alternative retailer, such as a pharmacy. Emanators also represented a marketing opportunity, making it possible to tap into the lucrative radiological marketplace in a way that both emphasized the value of medical expertise and offered ancillary business opportunities - a patient coming in for emanation might mention another malady or puchase a health tonic. Moreover, emanators served an advertising function when patients told friends and family members about the glowing curiosity they had seen in the doctor's office.