Cancer Victim Saved I at Threshold of Death

Sun (Auckland), Volume II, Issue 595, 22 February 1929, Page 1

Cancer Victim Saved I at Threshold of Death

LEAD TREATMENT SUCCESSFUL CURE REPORTED ITow his second cousin, suffering from internal inoperable cancer and given five months to live by the doctors, was completely cured by the much-maligned lead-treatment, was told to The Sun to-day by Mr. F. O. Davies, of 2S Mjoa Road, Point Chevalier. The cancer sufferer was Mrs. Page, of Tam worth, New South Wales. Only 27 years of age, she had suffered painful illness for some time and was fast losing weight when she went into hos- j pital. The doctors’ examination re- ; vealed the fact that she was a hopeless case of internal cancer—too late for an operation. Her husband was told she had only five months to live and asked if there were no possible hope in expert treatment in Sydney. The doctors shook their heads, but added that there was “a sporting fifty-to-one chance.” They offered to recommend her to the Cancer Research as a candidate for one of the experimental treatments —the much-discussed injections of lead. Though Mr. Page had little hope, he agreed and Airs. Page came to Sydney, where admission to the Royal Hospital for Women, at Paddington, was procured for her. She was so weak that she could not walk at this time and an operation was attempted, but the preliminary incisions showed tlie case was hopeless. Tlie lead treatment then commenced. The proportion of this strange liquid named “choriotrope,” which is really a solution containing millions of metallic fragments of lead so small that they are only visible in special microscopes, was undertaken by the N.S.W. Cancer Research, following the formula of the discoverer, Dr. Blair Bell, of Liverpool, England. Two double injections were given the patient, the terrible after-effects of lead-poisoning which followed each injection causing her intense agony. The liquid was injected directly into one of the veins of the arm.

But the cancer growth was suffering more than the patient, for the lead particles, attracted to it as to a magnet, were quickly poisoning its life and in a short time every malignant cell was either dying or dead.

The patient began to improve. She lost the cancer-pallor; her face grew rosey, and she began to put on weight. Examination showed that the cancer had completely vanished. Airs. Page is now completely restored to health. Her weight is 9 stone 33 pounds—greater than at any time in her life. It is only now that she knows she was suffering from cancer as her husband and relations did not tell her before.