THE VALUE OF RADIUM.

King Country Chronicle, Volume VII, Issue 525, 11 December 1912, Page 3

THE VALUE OF RADIUM.

A great many sensational and impressive statements have been made regarding the value of radium, bit it would appear that most of them have been based on pure guess work. The "Scientific American" has made an attempt to at the truth of the matter, and the result of the infomation that journal has obtained from the most reliable sources shows that the quantity of radium in the world is so extremely small that tne value of any stated quantity, like that of very big diamonds, is purely nominal. Radium is worth whatever its possessors can get for it. The United States Geological Survey estimates that there is probably not over two or three ounces of radium in the world to-day. There are, however, several "radium banks" in America and Europe, and these institutions do a remarkably lucrative business by renting out to medical men tubes containing microscpoic specks of radium at something like £lO per day. While radium is known to be of some value in treating lupus, which is a form of tuberculosis, there is little else known concerning its medicinal value. The claim made for radium that it is a curative agent in cases of cancer has not been borne out by experiments. A little while a»o it was reported that the Austrian Government had purchased the only two mines under private ownership producing the ores from which radium is made, thereby gaining a monopoly of its manufacture. This report is inaccurate. It is true that the Austrian mines and the Austrian Government hitherto have supplied the bulk of the radium salts, but at present Sweden is producing radium from kolm, Britain is obtaining the ores from Welsh mines, and the United States obtains supplies from /-nines in western Colorado. Ten tons of this ore produces only twenty or thirty milligrammes of radium, and the process of manufacture is therefore highly expensive. . , :■ ....