WOMAN’S SIGHT SAVED

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27408, 22 July 1954, Page 14

WOMAN’S SIGHT SAVED

Atomic Ray Wire Operation . LONDON, July 20. Britain’s first operation with a hair-breadth-size atomic ray wire saved a woman’s eyesight, Dr. Frank Ellis, of the Churchill Hospital, Oxford, told an international conference on radio isotopes at Oxford. The operation was performed successfully on an elderly woman whose only good eye was attacked by cancer, the “Birmingham Post” reported. Normally the procedure would have been to remove the cancerous eye, leaving the woman blind. Dr. Ellis told how he and a colleague, Dr. Raymond Oliver, devised a new method of radio treatment. A piece of finest wire was “cooked.” It gave off germ-killing atomic rays. It was then inserted into the defective eye, and the sight was saved. Dr. Ellis said he had also used the atomic ray wire successfully to deal with cancerous lesions of the tongue. A man aged 82 had recovered from a cancerous growth in the mouth, partly because he was able to move his tongue freely during treatment.