THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, MAY 3, 1909. THE WONDERFUL HEALER.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3179, 3 May 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, MAY 3, 1909. THE WONDERFUL HEALER.

The marvellous possibilities connected with the discovery of radium were recently referred to by the "London Observer" in the following words:—"Politics are again subordinate by comparison with the latest step in that marvellous movement toward 3 the elimination of pain which is perhaps the greatest process of our time. At the instance of the King, and by the equal munificence of two generous donors, Sir Ernest Cassel and Lord Iveagn, there has been founded a Radium Institute. Events of this kind are of quintessential significance for social progress—and therefore in the long run for political —and yet they attract less attention than a factious squabble or a diplomatic manoeuvre. So enslaved are the mass of men by the routine of imagination. But what does the new departure mean? It opens up almost infinite possibilities, not only in remedying disfigurement, but in destroying disease and restoring sound tissue. The experts who will supervise tha Institute—it will be the best equipped in existence —are bound to warn us against premature expectations, but thy themselves dare to dream of epoch-making results. Radiiwn is in one respect like electricity, gravitation, and life itself. We know how it acts, but not what it is. The beneficence of light is the common-place of our whole being, and radium as an intense curative agent may compare with ordinary pure light almost as that does with mere darkness. Associated with a strefng co.nmittee of scientific exports, the Chairman of new lestiiuie is Sir Frederick 'troves. He will hardly ha regarded as a heedless enthusiast, yet his statement of the chances of the future in his lecture at. the LonJjn Hosp.tal quite recently wn.i mere wonderful and daring in its si;f:-ge.;r,ion;-j of hopo for the human race than the vision;-; of 'Prometheus Unbound.' Sir Frederick described how, by the treatment winch the Radium institute proposes to develop, excrescences,, lumps under the skin, scar.-;, and birthmarks may be removed, tumours and ulcers may i e cured, and yet this agent, though it can hj terrible if misused, can be made to searc'i out by soma strange selective pow r what it is mean's to work on, and leave sound

tissue unaffected. It may be that consumption and cancer alike will yield to radium. The thorough research now to be carried on in this country will be a great voyage of discovery 'through strange seas of thought.' Sir Federick Treves says that 'if radium ever sinks to being worth its weight in gold, it will be exceedingly cheap.' In the first place, more radium is required. 'The great difficulty,' said an expert at the Middlesex Hospital, 'is to get enough of the substance to give it a fair chance.' The increased supply is expected to come from the pitchblende deposits in Cornwall, but the costliness of the process of extraction may be deduced from the fact that only a few grains of radium are procurable from a ton of pitchblende. In a statement made to the 'Daily Mail,' Sir Frederick Treves said: 'We shall treat well-to-do patients and charge a fee. We shall treat the poor and charge nothing.'' His Majesty's encouragement has once again given a decisive impetus to that work of social amelioration with which he has been especially identified; and Sir Ernest Cassell and Lord Iveagh have rendered a great public service. How far will ic all go, this process of lessening pain and lengthening life? That is one of the que3tions, touching human interest to the quick, which makes us all discontented with the short span of our days. We long to see the end."