SYNTHETIC RADIUM

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 27, 26 October 1937, Page 7

SYNTHETIC RADIUM

London Research Worker's Quest ' A young Hondon research worxer ha on the track of one of the greatest discoveries in the history of science — tho manufacture of a synthetic radium. Of all the substances known to m%nkind, radium, so beneficial in the treatment of cancer, is the most costly and precious. By comparison gold fades into insigpificance. Gold is worth about £7 an ounce, while radium, if it were possible to buy an ounce, would . cost about £300,000! This research worker (for reasons of medical etiquette his identity must remain anonyinous), who has been connected with some of the most import-i ant medical X-ray discoveries of recent years, teleplioned to inquiro about a report that had appeared in the Daily Sketch of a recent form of power, he told a reporter his story. "For some years," he said, "I have been at work along these same linea.But what I am really after — what, in fact, the whole world of science seek3 to-day — is the manufacture of a synthetic Tadium which will serve medicine as elfectively as radium itself. "Before this becomes a commercial proposition, however, it will be necessary to have a dynamo giving off at least 1,800,000 volts. One such apparatus is already in existence in Berlin, and another ia in course of con* struction in this country, at the Cavendish Laboratory, in Cambridge. "Once this becomes available synthetic radium will bccome an accornplished fact, and it will then ho possible to tcst its medical value. "Synthetic radium, because of its chcaper cost of production, will prove oue of the greatest benefits iu tho history of medicine. It. will ernit 250,000 limes as much heat as an equal amount of coal, sterilise seeds and ldll microbes." The total amount of radium in this country to-day is some 80 grammes, worth about £500,000. Our ehief souree of supply is on the skores of the Great Bear Lake, on the Arctic Circle, in Canada.