SKILL WITH RADIUM.

Auckland Star, Volume LXI, Issue 77, 1 April 1930, Page 6

SKILL WITH RADIUM.

Dr. E. Haydon, of Devon (Eng.j; who was recently placed in control of radium to the value of about £5000, speaking of cancer and its treatment, said recently that in 1918 the deaths from cancer in England were 41,227, and in 192S 56,252 and this in spite of all the efforts of eur<n»ry radium, X-rays, sera and lead treatment, cither separately or combined. On the five years' basis hundreds of cases had been cured. It "was to the public that the medical profession must look for help. The public must be educated to seek advice early, and he suggested that this could be effected through the Ministry of Health establishing a special department with adequate personnel to deal with the disease. In addition to medical officers, special nurses distributed throughout the country could give the people help .and advice. He thought the nurses could be secured from among those who were pensioned after leaving hospitals; many of whom would be only too pleased to be able thus to supplement" their small savings. The setting up of such a system of supervision and education would cost the "State money, but it would be a small and negligible item in comparison with the good results" which might reasonably be expected. He believed that this proposition would be an economic one and that it would bestow the greatest possible boon on suffering humanity. At present cancer claimed one in seven of the population over the of thirty-live years. ■

_ At the same time the English Radium Commission, through one of its members, has mentioned the erroneous idea prevailing that radium treatment is easy, safe and effectual and the common desire that doctors generally should have the metal at hand for use. There would be extreme danger in placing so powerful a weapon in untrained hands; X-rays and even ultra-violet rays have been used by unskilled persons with serious results and radium is far less understood and less easy to handle without danger. At present radium supplies are concentrated in a few centres and this is a good thing in view of the further statement that the present problem is not so much the supply of additional quantities of radium as the increase in the number of those capable of using it safely and effectually. Australia has already reported many successes, about one-third of all cases treated, indeed a very high average of success. There is always a rush of candidates in the profession to meet a public demand for a new treatment of any disease, and this is why many new methods are so soon discredited. Specialism is yearly growing more and more necessary and in no direction is°special training more requisite than in the use of radium. The warning issued by the Radium Commission is addressed as much to the medical profession as the public, and it is intended to provide a post-graduate course for practitioners wishing to .acquire the knowledge and ekill to become experts in the suitable adjustment of radium emanations to the manifold forms of cancer. —H.A.Y.