Nearly two hundred years ago Crawford and Cruickshank, surgeons and chemists in the Royal Artillery, reported the occurrence of a "new earth" in the mines at the Scottish village of Strontian. Humphrey Davy, following the advice of Berzelius, isolated stable strontium in 1808 along with other alkali earth metals. It was not until 1883 that physiological effects of stable strontium were first recognized by none other than Sidney Ringer in his experiments on frog heart. The medicinal use of strontium salts was first described in Squire's Companion in 1894. Subsequently, strontium was introduced...