How Radium Cures

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 7840, 5 June 1905, Page 4

How Radium Cures

'ilia ease of cancer officially described in the report of the Hospital for Disease* of the Skin as being th» "first authenticated case of undoubted carfqer treated and cured by radium " is not the only remarkable instance of the healing, powers of the new substance as exhibited at iki't hospital. A pretty girl with her face disfigured by a terrible "port win# stain " has been attending there for some months, travelling from St.; Albans for treatment. Hadium was applied, and the purple discoloration gradually faded as the dilated bl6odvesrfris causing the trouMe were destroyed by the action of the rays. It, was impossible to delect any remnant of the original livid blotch. Quite a little girl at the same Jio»pital has a multitude of little "mol- ■ " on her ntck and shoulders. Hadium has been applied to them, and each application is marked by a white clear circle of normal skin, the excrescences being entirely removid. The radium is contained in a disc of wood-Covered with mica aljout a quarter of an inch in diameter. Tho patient holds it to the affected spot for fifteen or twenty minutes at each sitting. Its effect may most readily be understood by regarding it as a mild and steadily controlled cautery, though doubtless the rajs given oft have a healing asi -weil as a destroying influence upon the tissues. In the other case, which has been tinder the observation of Jlr. (!. Setfueira. of Jcwry.-stiveet, Aldgate, for some years, the effect of radium was., as follows. The hard lump on the left 'side of the" patjient began to break down two years ago, accompanied by ulceration on the surface of "the skin. When' radium was ap—■ plied the ulceration slowly healed, and later the mass of the cancer itself wa,s gradually absorbed bv the surrounding healthy tissue. The peculiarity of cancer normally is the inability of the adjacent healthy tissue to overcome! the enemy ial I Its midst. Radium seems to have had the power in this case to not only destroy the malignancy of the Mucor and ..to stop its power foi' extending and invading, but to .stimulate the ihealftihy tissue to iigffu with ind absorb the foreign growth. In a word, the malignant tumour ivas first paralysed and then des:royed.