MAN AND HIS STAR

Hokitika Guardian, 13 January 1927, Page 4

MAN AND HIS STAR

A NOVEL THEORY OK CANCER

(ISy ] > |}. CHARLES NORDMANN, Chief Astronomer at Paris Observatory, in the London J) ai iy -Mail ”.)

The recent experiments carried out on the Alps by a number of physicians have definitely proved that extremely penetrating X-rays reach us through space.

This astonishing discovery was foieshadowed by the researches of the American Millikan and the German Kbihorster.

These rays constantly break tip part of the air atom, which has the olleet of making it a good conductor of electricity. Proof that this disintegration is not due. as was believed for a long time, to the rays of radium contained in the sun was only recently made public. This discovery is due to the fact that conductivity of air increases enormously at higher altitudes, as may bo tested in a balloon or oil a mountaintop. The discovery will be important to meteorologists. It will also have other results not yet quite understood. These will he. seen in the general health of humanity, and it is to this aspect that 1 would like to draw particular attention.

For a long time the cause of cancer has been earnestly but vainly sought, ft has been attributed to a microbe, but tbe theory has not been established. Indeed, the only real cancer growths which have been successfully reared by artificial means, apart froin cancer grafts, are tlio.se caused by X-rays or radium rays. Tile terrible radiodermatitis (tbe cancer that attacks radiologists) and the malignant and often fatal disease observed in manipulators of the Riintgen rays bate resisted all examinations. Rut since the X-rays and other rays pf our laboratories can produce cancer, a terrible and inevitable question

.'irises. Can wc escape from the conclusion that al those forms of cancer which bulk so largely in one death rate arc really caused by X-rays from space ? ft is true that these X-rays from the sky arc. relatively, not intense. But' their action is continual and uninterrupted. It trees on night and day throughout. our lifetime, penetrating our bodies and tissues. The constant drip of water throughout a number of years upon a rock will wear if away far more effectively than a huge torrent of short duration.

And there is another important fa otto support this theory—that X-ravs produced in out laboratories are generally more harmful the farther tliov penetrate. It has now been proved that the X-rays which reach us from space, which I propose to call celestial X-rays, have a penetrative power which far exceeds the strongest X-rays we can 'produce. Of these latter the strongest fradium rays) are completely

stopped by a sheet of lead only two centimetres thick. To stop celestial X-rays on ihe other baud, one would require a sheet of lead two metres (or .100 times as) thick, or—which comes to the same thing—a depth of 22 metres (about 24 yards) of water or 9 metres (about 10 yards) of earth. These rays which break up part of the air atoms might likewise react on the atoms which form otir bodies. I think it a highly probable theory that cancer is produced by the accumulative and prolonged action of celestial X-rays, and that might he why it is especially common in old people. The origin of these rays is assuredly not in the sun, since it has boon found that their intensity is as great by night as by day. Astronomers now believe flint the celestial X-rays come from certain stars. If this, indeed, be true, the old saying “ each to bis own star ” assumes a new and dramatic significance. Each of us has his particular little failing—idiosyncrasy as doctors say in their pedantic language. It may lie that certain celestial X-rays (which have not all the same wave-length) might act with special force on a particular man. Napoleon often said he had his star. Perhaps it gave him the cancerous ulcer of the stomach which caused Ills death at St. Helena !