COMBATING CANCER

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 110, 19 February 1935, Page 3

COMBATING CANCER

NEW ZEALAND SYSTEM PRAISED. RADIOLOGIST'S TOUR ABROAD. (Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, February 18. Dr. Charles de Monchaux, radio therapist at the Dunedin Hospital and lecturer in radiology at the University of Otago, returned to New Zealand today after an absence of 10 months visiting leading X-ray, radium and cancer departments in Great Britain, on the Continent, and in America. He also attended the international radiological conference at Zurich in July, and the British radiological conference in London in December.

"At present," said Dr. de Monchaux, "very good work is being done in London in cancer research, both on the physical and viological sides. There have also been developments and improvements in technique and the use pf what is known as radium bombs. In London, this radium or beam therepy implies the use of comparatively large quantities of radium concentrated in one container and applied externally to the patient. "The biggest advances in the technique of deep X-ray therapy were in America and Germany, where several clinics rnd institutes have developed the idea of what is called super-voitage X-ray therapy, and have machines in use giving up to 700 and 800 kilovolts of electrical tension. It should be noted that both those aspects of%radio-theia-py are still in the experimental titage. Probably the best radium work is being done in Paris, Stockholm and London, and one observed definite improvement and advances iu the technique of radium application. Tn most of the institution clinics visited a real effort is being made to get down to sound principles of dosage and generally to standardise radium therapy.

Team Work by Experts. "The best work, of course, as is to be expected, is being done in those specially established self-contained and properly-equipped cancer institutes and hospitals where teams of experts work together, and where .research work, physical and biological, is associated with the practical work of diagnosis and treatment of cancer. The most important of these institutes are iho Memorial Hospital, New York, the Cancer Hospital at Villequie, Paris, the Cancer Hospital, London (where there have been definite additions and improvements recently), and the famous radium institutes of Paris and Stockholm. "The reason Tor this is the concentration of effort and skill in many or these self contained cancer and radium institutes. Cancer is a matter not merely for one expert but for a team of experts working together, and the watchwords in proper cancer control and satisfactory treatment ot this scourge are concentration and co-oper-ation. Where one gets a diffusion of WO rk and skill and a lack ot co-ordma-tiou, the results are more or less worthless. . „ n(f ,.„„„ "From the point ot view of piogiess and scientific investigation, New faland " said Dr. de Monchaux is in Kiapp; position that it has to lowed on the lines of Sweden, which is the best example in the world ot proper cancer organisation and control. in New Zealand, the British Lmpne Cancer Campaign Society insisted on this policy of centralisation in the four big centres, with general co-ordination or the whole work. This policy of concentration and co-ordination in cancer treatment must, however, be maintained if the work in New Zealand is to advance, and 1 look .forward to the day when each big centre in this country will have a special cancer institute or hospital, self-contained and adequately, equipped, in which research work will be associated side by side with the more practical work ot diagnosis and treatment. Mucli good work has been done in New Zealand, where the general cancer control and organisation are very sound and satisfactory but there must be no diffusion of effort and energy, otherwise we will go back instead of forward.

Research Work at Dunedln. "During my absence I heard that one of the centres had recommended that the present very good cancer research work being done in Dunedm should be abandoned, and that a research scholar or worker should be sent away, say, to Britain, to prosecute Ins investigations. This, I think, would be definitely a retrograde step, as it is essential that research, both physica and biological, should be associated with and not divorced from other more practical aspects of the anti-cancer campaign. Sweden, as I say, has the best organisation against cancer in the world to-day, and it should be the aim and ideal of the New Zealand branch, which up to this time has done excellent work for this country against a great scourge, to emulate the state of affairs in Sweden, which has, as a country, many analogies with New Zealand. There is no reason, to my mind, why we should not have in a few years' time as good an organisation as Sweden has to-day, with equal facilities for carrying out the best work in cancer treatment; but to attain this one emphasises again the absolute need, as has been realised in Sweden, of sound organisation, concentration and not diffusion of effort, proper general co-ordination, and finally! a wholehearted spirit of cooperation, not only between members of the laity and the medical profession, but between those, members of the medical profession ifself —namely, radiologists, surgeons, pathologists, research workers, bio-chemists, and physicists—who are intimately concerned with the problem of malignant disease."'