SCROFULA CURE.

Auckland Star, Volume LXXI, Issue 81, 5 April 1940, Page 9

SCROFULA CURE.

SIMPLE AND CHEAP. — RADIOACTIVE SALT SOLUTION. JAP. PROFESSOR'S DISCOVERT. (Special.—By Air Mail.) HONGKONG, March 17. That dread disease, scrofula, a form of tuberculosis which attacks the glands in the neck, has at last been conquered and its cure rendered simple, thanks to a recent .discovery made !l>y Dr. Tokio Takeuchi, physics professor at the Tokyo University of Engineering. The cure is u simple and inexpensive formula partly derived from radium. It can be easily prepared wherever radium cells are available, without disintegrating the radium itself as in the case of enncer treatment, and at a cost which is negligible. To the patient, apart from its curative value, the advantage consists in obviating scars which a surgical treatment — the ordinary method of treating the disease—leaves on the neck. No monster apparatus like the cyclotron is necessary in preparing* the formula. All that the physician requires in addition to radium cells ie some common table salt. Radium cells are imbedded in the salt for about a week inside a glass container. This causes artificial radioactivity, the gamma rays of the radium cells "excite" the salt and atoms are radioactivated. Unlike radium itself, artificial radioactive salt is harmless. It can be produced at minimum cost because the process requires no disintegration and therefore no drain on radium supply. A salt water solution is prepared from this formula and administered to the patient by hypodermic injection when the lymphatic glands are affected, or applied directly when the disease attacks the bronchial glands. Dr. Takashi Shibuya, the first practising physician to apply the solution to victims of scrofula has found that one injection a week will care a patient in two months.