CANCER RESEARCH

Hokitika Guardian, 27 January 1932, Page 2

CANCER RESEARCH

PROMISING WORK

SERUM TREATMENT RESULTS

WELLINGTON, January 25,

Sir Louis Barnett, chairman of tile Otago and Southland Division of the New Zealand Cancer Campaign returned on the Rcmuera with Lady Barnett from a year’s tour of England and the Continent. He was able to give a highly important survey of the progress in the treatment of cancer. “The general opinion throughout Europe,” he said, “is that cancel treatment is preferably concentrated in well equipped centres instead of distributing research in radium work over a number of smaller towns. So definite is this centralisation that a new organisation of prominent English women is being formed, headed by the Queen, the Duchess of York and Ladv Reading, to assist in providing transport and seeing to the welfare of patients taken from the smaller centres for treatment i n the main clinics.

“The feeling is that the sending away of emanation tubes should be reserved for every special cases which entthot be brought to tbe centres. The emanation outfit i.S still necessary in the main centres ; partly because radon tubes are found essential in the treatment of certain types of callcer. For instance, cancer of the tongue is no longer operated upon. Glands in the neck are removed surgically where feasible, but the tongue is treated with emanation needles.. The same applies to cancer of tlie throat and the larynx and other parts of the body. The very expensive method of treatment known as the radium bomb lias been abandoned, the results being inadequate in view of the trouble and expense occasioned. It is almost invariable now to treat cancer of the uterus' bv radium in preference to operative methods, and there are surgeons who adopt an operation for the treatment of the common type of cancer of the womb, and the results have improved in that particular department.”

Questioned regarding Dr. Gye’s theory that the cancer virus can be separated, Sir Louisi replied that there was a great deal of scepticism about its general application, though it might apply to a certain line of research in connection with the production of a particular form of malignant growth in a chicken. The theories of the Belgian Dr. Bendien had been exhaustively tried out ; and, put colloquially, were regarded as a “washout,”

“There are,” continued Sir Louis Barnett, “some promising lines of research, particularly in the London Hospital, in connection with serum treatment of cancer, aiid shortly ; 1 think, Dr. Lumsden will announce some very striking results that have been obtained by serum treatment. 11 ’