Page 2 Advertisements Column 5

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXI, Issue 450, 18 February 1909, Page 2

GURU OF CANCKR

WoNDKKi'Ui. results have attended the efforts of scientists to employ radium as a cure for cancer. Progress seems to Ire undoubtedly made towards the discovery of the true remedy or remedies for cancer, if one is to judge from the very interesting demonstration made at the meeting of the Teague against Cancer at Paris. Professors Bouchard and Taucher and Drs. Dominici, Keating Hart, Wickham, and Degrais, described some very striking cures. Dr. Dominici made his first experiments of cancer treatment with radium in Professor Taucher’s ward at the St. Touis Hospital. He treated not on superficially cancers of the skin, but also profound tumours and cancers that could not be operated upon. A number of patients formerly afflicted with cancer and now entirely cured were presented to the meeting. One case was that of a patient who had a deep epithelioma over the upper jawbone, and was treated with radium. In less than six weeks he was cured, and the* tumor was cicatrised. The method followed was very simple. Dr Dominici inserted a gold case containing a bulb with five milligrams of bromide of radium in the affected tissues, and left it there for four days, with the result already mentioned. A woman who had a tumor inside the lower lip was operated upon, but the tumor reappeared. She was then subjected to the radium treatment, and was cured in seven weeks. Dr Wickham and Dr Degrais showed a number of similar cures. They have treated 62 cases in the space of three and a half years, and only six failed to be cured. In a few light superficial cases of cancroids an application of one hour sufficed to bring on a cure. In profound tumors they applied, so to speak, a cross-fire consisting of two bulbs with radium, whose action converges on a given point,- and the result has been very satisfactory. In very deep tumors, however, radium is incapable of producing rapid improvement. In such cases Dr Keating Hart showed that excellent results could be obtained by means of high-tension electric sparks acting on cancerous tumors subjected to the surgeon’s knife. This “ fulguration,” as it were, constitutes a new treatment of cancer which has given remarkable results. Several patients who had undergone this treatment and were cured were shown. One of these had a great tumor on the neck upon which several surgeons considered it impossible to operate. Dr Tuftier cut it out piece by piece and Dr Keating Hart “fulgurised” it several times as the operation was proceeding, with the result that the pain vanished at once. The wound, which was larger than a fist, cicatrised with wonderful rapidity in less than five weeks. Another case was that of a man who had five tumors on his leg. Four of them disappeared under X-rays, but the fifth only became more malignant. An operation was then performed with “fulguratiou,” and the pain at once ceased. A rapid cure set in, and the patient, whose leg was considered lost, is able to stand on it to-day. Professor Gaucher, says the Telegraph, in remarking on all these cases, said that it was evident that instances occurred in which one mode of treatment failed and another succeeded, and that these different methods, each in itself a valuable discovery, supplement and complete one another.