TREATING CANCER

Ashburton Guardian, Volume 56, Issue 286, 15 September 1936, Page 3

TREATING CANCER

THE USE OF THE X-RAY.

AUSTRALIAN PHYSICIST’S VIEW.

(Per Press Association.) WELLINGTON, September 14. A statement that lie was inclined to the opinon that for conditions in Australia and New Zealand the use of such high voltages as in a 1,000,000-volt X-ray was not justified, but that an increase above the 200,000 volts nominally in use in both countries was needed, was made to-night by; Professor T. H. Laby, F.R.S., consulting physicist to the Department of Health, Commonwealth of Australia, and professor of natural philosophy in the University of Melbourne, who is at present in Wellington on his return journey to Australia after a trip abroad, inquiring into .the use of X-rays and radium in the treatment of cancer. Professor Laby was from 1909 to 1915 professor of physics at Victoria University College, and he is external examiner in physics to the University of New Zealand. He will leave by the Awatea to-morrow for Sydney, via Auckland. Professor Laby visited the leading cancer clinics of France, Britain and the United States. His visit to France was the third for that purpose. He found, he said, that the French Government had established a cancer institute two or three years ago in a suburb of Paris, and it was the most magnificently equipped and housed hospital he had ever seen.

TJie object of his visit was to discover whether it lvas desirable to introduce into Australia the use of 1,000,000-volt X-rays, Professor Laby continued. He found that one such equipment was being established at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, London, and there were four or five in use in the United States. He visited two of the American clinics which had had experience with the use of these rays. He was inclined to think that for conditions in Australia and New Zealand the use of such high voltages was not justified; but an increase above the 200,000 volts that was nominally in use in both countries was needed.

One factor that was relevant to the question of the use of 1,000,000 volts was that Professor E. O. Lawrence, the distinguished American physicist, and inventor of the instrument called, the cyclotron, had reported that investigations made by medical men and biologists in his laboratory indicated that tiie neutron (a recently-discovered radiation) was more effective in the treatment of malignant disease than X-rays. While such a conclusion was to bo accepted with reserve, it was relevant to the making of plans for the use of very high energy X-rays. Similar Problems. Professor Laby said he had learnt something of the problems in New Zealand in use of the radium and Xrays, in conjunction with surgery, in the treatment of disease, and he found a certain similarity with, the problem in Australia. The four principal hospital centres corresponded with the States of Australia, and they had, too, to exercise the greatest economy in expenditure. There had been established in Melbourne just before he went abroad an X-ray laboratory where the instruments required in Xray therapy could be standardised for the whole of Australia, and where research work in relation to the same subject would be carried on. A laboratory for the purpose had been constructed on modern lines. The coordination of the work of the treatment centres in the States in the work of this central laboratory was similar to the problem in New Zealand. He had seen physical work which had been started in the Dominion under the auspices of the New Zealand branch of the British Empire Cancer Campaign by funds provided by the Travis Trust, Christchurch, and it seemed to him that an excellent beginning had been made. Professor Laby emphasised that lie spoke as a layman in medical matters, and, while he spoke of the use of Xrays and radium, he did not express any opinion as to when those agencies should be used in the treatment of any case. It was evident that in treatment of malignant disease it was a combination of the three agencies of surgery, radium, and X-rays that was now followed, and it was the problem of the medical man to determine whether one of these agencies or a combination of them was the treatment to he used. It was the object of the physicist to enable the medical man to carry out the treatment he intended. To do that required a very high degree of skill on the part of the medical man and, the physicist, and certain very specialised hospital and physical equipment.