TREATING CANCER

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 55, Issue 238, 22 July 1935, Page 7

TREATING CANCER

SURGERY AND RADIUM MERITS. DR. MOODY’S IMPRESSIONS. (Special to the “ Guardian.”) N DUNEDIN, July 21. When asked! if, during his visits to European clinics, lie had learned that any new methods of canying out experimental work in the cure of cancer were being undertaken, Di. A. S. Moody, who returned to Dunedin on Friday night, after a tour abroad, summed up his impressions by saying: “After I had been shown, recently, completed statistics dealing with the treatment of cancer by surgical means and by radium, I put a direct question to the director oi one of the largest surgical clinics in Europe. I asked wliat fine of treatment he would follow if he were treating one of Iris own relations. His answer cam© rather reluctantly. ‘i would operate,’ he said. “Radium, properly applied has its uses in inoperable cases, and in some special cases it can compete ' successfully with operations/’ added Dr. Moody.

RADIUM IN MELTING POT. SURGEON’S STATEMENT. (Per Press Association.) CHRISTCHURCH, July 21. “The radium treatment of cancer is in the melting pot,” said Dr. P. Stanley Foster who returned to Christchurch yesterday in summarising the experience gained at leading hospitals in Canada and the United States which he visited during his recent tour. In some cases excellent results were being obtained with radium, he said, but at the Toronto General Hospital, which had probably the finest record for research in the British Empire, the specialists were so unhappy about the results obtained with radium that they had sent one of their staff to ‘ ‘spy out the land” in Europe and determine whether better results' were being obtained there. 'lnstead of direct metallic radium treatment, radium emanations, evanescent substance which were encased in gold shells and soon lost their potency, were being used at the Memorial Hospital in New York. A similar method had been in use in Christchurch, said Dr. Foster,' the shells being “planted” by means of tubes in parts of the body which were difficult of access. A deep X-ray treatment had also been developed in New York, concerning which research workers were very hopeful.