DANGER IN RADIUM.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 9995, 16 March 1910, Page 7

DANGER IN RADIUM.

A COMPARISON OF SUCCESSES AND CASUALTIES DUE TO ITS USE. It seems now fairly well concluded that the range of efficacy in radium therapeusis is exceedingly small, while its dangers are grave, and generally irreparable. It is likely we shall have to conclude that radium has done more harm than goorJ to suffering human-kind. We recognise that there are still enthusiasts. The council of the Royal British Radium Institute includes Sir Frederick Treves, physician to King Edward; Sir William Kamsay, and Joseph aohn Thompson, profes-

sors of physios at the Royal Institution, and Sir .Frederick in February last held the view that the utility of radium is likely to be very great. "I have seen" he says, "moles removed by it. I have watched it cure a birth-mark the size of a gooseberry on a baby's head; an angioma \ on a girl's eyelid as big as a plum; port wine stains can be removed by it; even lumps under the skin yield to it —fuur weeks' treatment dispersed one as a larg-j as a hen's , egg; rodent ulcers of a certain type may also be successfully treated. At the same time, although we kt.ow that radium does these things, we j know little else about it." I

What we, do know very definitely is an amazing list of casualties following upon such experimentation, by comparison with which the therapeutic triumphs here cited by Sir Frederick should justly ba termed contemptible. Amazing claims are made in France for radium efficacy. In February last Degrais of Faris declared ,- we are no longer in a period of expectancy; we are now in a period of confirmation." At the Paris Radium Institute sixtyfour of eighty-six cases of surface cancer have been reported cured; all kinds of cutaneous affections have been treated successfully, it is said, and chronic rheumatism and tuberculosis have yielded to radium treatment. Cum grano salis, we advise. On the other hand, the list of disasters due to the use of radium and ofi ts congener ttie X raya is simply appalling. Dr John H. Edwards, president of the British Electrotherapeutic Society has (or had in 1906) a cancerous growth caused by constant exposure.. His left arm has had to be amputated. Another victim was Clarence Dally, who submitted to repeated amputations of fingers and then of the armtj, but who finally died. Kadgient, of Paris, died from the effects of his experiments; so did Blacker of London, Dr Louis Weigal of Rochester, and Wolram C. Fuchs of Chicago.