Atomic Cocktail Meaning

(idiomatic, medicine) A drinkable liquid containing a radioactive substance, used in health care either as a diagnostic aid or as a treatment, especially for cancer of the thyroid.

Example: 1954 March 22, "Medicine: Atomic Diagnosis," Time (retrieved 19 March 2014):
  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."
1998, Jerome Klinkowitz, Vonnegut in Fact: The Public Spokesmanship of Personal Fiction, ISBN 9781570032370, p. 73 (Google preview):
  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.
2007, Ira Edwards, Honest Nutrition, ISBN 9781425197322, p. 130 (Google preview):
  The test showed excessive hormone, so the doctor prescribed an “atomic cocktail,” a radioactive iodine mixture designed to partially kill the thyroid gland.
2010, R Alan Smith, Our Eyes Are on You, ISBN 9781615797745, p. 148 (Google preview):
  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.
A mixed alcoholic beverage, created in Las Vegas, USA, in the mid-20th century.
2001 April 15, James McManus, "Profiles in Corruption" (book review of The Money and the Power by Sally Denton and Roger Morris), New York Times (retrieved 19 March 2014):
  Its most famous drink is the atomic cocktail—vodka, brandy, Champagne, splash of sherry.