THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, JUNE 13, 1910. THE RADIUM CURE.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 10067, 13 June 1910, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY. MONDAY, JUNE 13, 1910. THE RADIUM CURE.

One half of the world, aays the old proverb, does not know how the other half lives. Neither does It know how the other half dies. And in many respects it iVwell that it should not have a too close acquaintance with the latter subject. To a sensitive mind, untrained by the experience of the doctor or the hospital [nurse, the realisation of the awful nature of some of the ills which flesh is heir to would bring an absolute terror of existence. Were even the most casehardened to have presented to him at one comprehensive view all the people who at anv moment of any day were dying from malignant tumors, the sight would be unbearable. Statistics tell us of these horrors, but fortunately they do not picture them as they are. [One of the things they tell us, however, is that one out of every twelve persons who reach middle life dies of cancer. And the most exhaustive medical research has not yet revealed the proximate cause of this scourge or thrown much light upon the question of its prevention. If there is a cancer germ, as many scientists suppose, it has not yet been isolated, and in the absence of the knowledge that this would give all attempts to provide either a prophylactic or a cure have had to be carried on more or ' less in the dark. But twelve years ago, after the remarkable discovery of Rontgen that by means of the X rays electricity could be made to endow man with practically an. additional sense of vision, the dcor was opened to a new field of investigation in the , wondrous atomic world. And deducing the existence of a Mtherto. an-

known element, M. Curie and his ■< gifted wife sought for and found i the marvellous substance called radium. Electricity was supposed—and the supposition is gaining strength from experience—to be a i remedial agent of unexampled power could it be brought definitely to bear upon disease, and it was not surprising that after the successful results with the X rays in certain skin affections high hopes should have been immediately centred in the spontaneously generated light and heat of radium. Nor was that hope disappointed, and it ia now proved beyond all doubt that the mysterious emanations of this strange sub--1 stance, with its apparently eternal 'life spark, are able under favourable j circumstances to dissipate the hither to incurable disease of cancer even in its most malignant form. But absolute specifics, even including antitoxic serums, are very rare, and it may be too soon to pronounce radium, even where it can be fully applied, as a specific for cancer. Such news is so good that it requires an effort, even in the face of evidence, to believe it to be true. tsut the fact is beyond dispute that it is a curative agent more potent than any yet known. There are too many weH-utrested cases of cancers having been cared bv> radium for even the conservatism of the medical profession to stand out against its claims, which are now fairly admitted. What were unquestionably typical cancers in mora than one form have disappeared under its application, and there is good reason to believe that their disappearance is final. Were it only successful, however, in a percentage of such cases radium would be an incalculable boon to mankind. Even a partial solution of the most ghastly problem by which medical science has hitherto been nonplussed would entitle it to be considered so. And it now seems quite safe to hope that radium is at least to some degree the solvent of the awful cancer puzzle. It is a pathetic thing to think thflt the cure of cancer a"d other diseases may be lying right at our hands without our being able to see it. Why Nature should have secreted the radium cure so thoroughly that it has only now begun to be thought of is a mystery to which speculation can find no key. The partides ot radium, widely distributed though they may be, are ro minute | that one pound weight of the materi ial is worth more than eighty solid tons of pure goJd. The difficulty of procuring it for use in the cure of disease is tberpfore sell-evident. ] Fortunately its extraordinary energy spontaneously reproduces itself so that it never wears out, or at all events not so far as our present knowledge of it goes. That is the compensation for the difficulty of procuring radium. Another compensation is that an infinitesimal particle of it will effect the results desired. Still the benefits of this wonderful element, if element it be, are unfortunately far beyond the reach of the ordinary sufferers from the diseases which it alone is able to successfully attack. As time goes on, however, and radium paosibly becomes more easily obtainable, its use may be extended, and medical men may be enabled to use it in every part of the world. Thid is the devout wish of all who would delight in seeing the suffering of humanity reduced.