RADIUM.

Hokitika Guardian, 7 October 1921, Page 4

RADIUM.

SIR T. PAR KIN SON’S VIEWS DCNKDIN CELTICISM. DINEi.) IN, October 1. The statements attributed to Sir Thomas Parkinson in condemnation of the use of radium as an agent in -the surgery are strongly ciiii ised by Dr iL. E Harnett, chairman of tin* imdium Committee of the Dunedin Hospital, and Professor ol Surgery at Otago l nivorsity, and Dr P. D. Cameron, ollicyr in charge of the radium and X-ray department. Dunedin Hospital. 1 hey asort that the opinions expressed by Sir T. Parkinson are not borne out by recent reports of Radium Institutes in all parts of the world, including London. Radium appears to have succeeded in improving or curing an increasingly large number ot case which are impossibe. or very difficult to treat by anv other means. Numbers of distinguished surgeons have i «’j orted that they have ah mdoued operations on cancers in regions difficult of access because they bud that radium, though not by any means a certain cure, gives better proportionate results. Cancer in certain situations in the abdomen, l.vn phosarcoma, and rodent ulcers in any situation, birthmarks, and keloid seal, to quote a few examples, are all considered by competent authorities as eminently suitable lor radium t'c.lment. Sir T. Parkinson is not recognised as an authority on the subject of radium and X-rays, and Drs Harnett and Cameron emphatically di ny his statement that radium lias proved a failure and has dropped almost entirely out of use in London. .Moreover. tliOv say that his reckless advocacy of tin* new modification of X-ray technique emanating from Erlangen, in Havana. is, to say the least of it. unwise, as ilu* method at present is mi trip nidy. They think it may interest Sir '1 . Parkinson to know that one of our New Zealand graduates. Dr Colin Anderson. of Napier, is at present in Havana studying the Erlangen system of the ii.se of X-rays on behalf ol the .Manchester Institute of Radiology. t<< which he is all ached. The medical profession is regarding with intense interest this new experimental work with X-i.iys of enormous penetrating power, hut even if it should prove as successful as its discoverers anticipate, there will still He a wide field for the use of radium.