THE RADIUM APPEAL.

Shannon News, 4 December 1923, Page 4

THE RADIUM APPEAL.

A DEPARTMENT IN WELLINGTON.

The general committee of the Wellington Radium (Radiation) appeal is keen io enlist the help of the country as well as the city in establishing at Wellington hospital a radium department for the treatment of cancer and other diseases by radium and X-Rays.

Th'e appeal district is the middle belt of the. North Island, bounded on the north by a line from New Plymouth to Napier via Taumarunui (iaclusive of those towns), on the south by the southern boundaries of Marlborough and Nelson provinces. The secretary of the general committee • is Mr. Gr. Mitchell, whose office is in the Exchange Buildings, Dominion . Avenue, off Lambton Quay. The radium (Radiation) appeal is not a movement initiated by laymen without the aid of doctors, nor is it a doctors/ to which laymen have merely passively responded. In this, as in other countries, the movement to ■establish a radium department springs jointly from the medical profession and from "individual citizens. In Wellington it is a citizens' movement, with professional participation and advice. But the phrase 'citizens' movement" do'es not correctly describe a campaign that is country-wide. The radium (Radiation) appeal is not only to the citizens of Wellington and'of the provincial towns, but to all the dwellers in the middle belt of the North Island, bounded on th'e north by the New Plymouth to Napier line via Taumarunui (and inclusive of those towns), and on the south by the southern boundaries of the Marlborough and Nelson pro- j vinces. |

The district mentioned can b'e best ] served from a radium .department in j Wellington. The lines of communication sought by the postal and passenger ' traffic services provide a reliable econ-, oinic (therefore impartial) guide ■in this matter. Every-day experience of this Hnd indicates that a radium department at the Wellington hospital would be well situated to distribute effective radium emanation within the middle belt of the Dominion.. A radium department in some other town, some provincial centre, might be more central for part of the district, but could not possibly be so central as Wellington for all of "it -And any movement to create a number of provincial radium departments is checked by the cost thereof. The money-limit at once begins to apply. The smaller , the collecting area, the less the chance ' to succeed by means of popular subscription. If radium departments are to be established in New Zealand they will have to be established in relatively large units, the size of which is determinable in the first place by the effective radius of radium emanation, and in the second place by the financial resources available. ~■'-. ! There is, of course,- another radius ot action besides that of the diminishing emanation. There is the radius of action of the parent himself or herself. Radiation treatment (by radium) may consist of the sending out. of emanation from the radium department, or it may consist of the personal attendance at the department, of the patient. In the latter case, cancer, or other disease anrenable to radiation, can be brought under the direct treatment not only o± radium but of X-rays. A patient going to the, radium department for radium on X-ray treatment is greatly helped or hindered by the distance the patient has to travel, by the duration of the journey or voyage, and by the character of the conveyance and accommodation en route. # Here, again,- Wellington is naturally the best centre, and its converging lines of traffic provide the best conveyance for patients not able to live in any of the four chief cities. When radium departments are established—as no doubt they will be—in Auckland, Wellington, and Christchurch, the radiation service will adjust itself naturally to the basing of the middle belt upon Wellington. What this will mean to sufferers may well be left to a sympathetic imagination. Who can fail to feel for the person in pain, who has to make, from some remote part of New Zealand, the pilgrimage to Dunedin! A radium department in each of the four centres would* be a merciful help. Perhaps in the future still more can be established. But at present four fully-equipped departments would seem to be the maximum obtainable by public subscription. Left, then, the Fiery Cross go forth from south to north and from coast to coast. Let country and city.vie in giving to the radium (radiation) appeal. This is the sort of rivalry that will hurt neither'of them.