Definition
A drinkable liquid containing a radioactive substance, used either as a diagnostic aid or as a treatment, especially for cancer of the thyroid.
In Context
- "For most patients, the old-fashioned basal metabolism test is a mild form of torture . . . and four Navy researchers have come to the conclusion that in big medical centers with facilities for handling radioisotopes it should be replaced by the "atomic cocktail.""
- "Lilienthal's speech to the scientists at G.E. revelled in possibilities for atomic measurement and medicine, especially how a man dying of a huge throat tumor was treated with an atomic cocktail, causing the tumor to disappear completely in a matter of days."
- "The test showed excessive hormone, so the doctor prescribed an “atomic cocktail,” a radioactive iodine mixture designed to partially kill the thyroid gland."
- "I was at Good Samaritan Hospital in Los Angeles for a radioactive iodine scan, this one at diagnostic levels—less radiation than the therapeutic levels I would eventually endure. I drank my first atomic cocktail: a vial of liquid radioactive iodine diluted in what seemed like gallons of water."