Drugs by Wireless

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 35, 11 March 1932, Page 5

Drugs by Wireless

Surgery and Short-wave Will surgeons shortly be able to ade minister a general anaesthetic by directing, painlessly, ultra-short waves on the brain? Baron von Ardenne, a German scientist of 26, famous for his discoveries in connection with the Cathode ray oscillograph, which enables the course of magnetic storms to be traced and the position of an aeroplane in flight to be determined, is now experimenting in his Berlin laboratory with ultrashort waves and their use in medicine, says the London "News-Chronicle." Baron von Ardenne has already demoustrated that he can stimulate any particular part of the brain, and can produce, if required, the same effect of insensibility as that of chloroform or ether and oxygen. The correction of imbecility or mental weakness, it is understood, ig another possibility to which the scientist is directing attention. Dr. "Villiara Beaumont, medical officer in charge of St. Pancras Municipal Clinic, has stated that there may come a time when a doctor will be able to write out a prescription substituting wave lengths for drugs. In 1929, Professor Hsau, of Jena, claimed to haye perfected a new death ray in the form of ultra short waves, which could be transmitted 250 miles without an aerial and by means of ordinary wireless valves. Germs in bacterial cultures, it was cluimed, were

killed instantly, and also animals of small size. Only a few days ago the Marchese Marconi said that the ultra-short waves with which he was experimenting might be developed into a death ray. "Hngineers tell me," he said, "that such short waves can kill mice and birds. I have not experimented with them as a death ray, but if you get in their path. your whole body begins te warm up."