RESEARCH INTO CANCER

Press, Volume XCVI, Issue 28371, 2 September 1957, Page 14

RESEARCH INTO CANCER

London Experiments In X-Ray Use

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) LONDON, August 30. A new treatment for cancer, hailed by doctors as the most promising advance for 20 years, was being tested at St. Thomas’s Hospital, London, the “Daily Express” science writer, Chapman Pincher, said today. No cures were claimed yet, but early results were so_ encouraging that five American centres had adopted it, Pincher said.

British scientists had found that X-rays were far mbre effective in killing cancer cells if they were given in the presence of a rich supply of oxygen. So a thick steel cylinder in which patients could be put under high pressure oxygen while they were being given X-rays had been set up at St. Thomas’s.

A team led by Dr. lan Chur-chill-Davidson had treated more than 50 patients, aged seven to 77, in this way, Pincher said. Many of them were still alive—some with no signs of cancer. The latest cases had been the most successful because Dr. Chur-chill-Davidson was now using a cobalt “bomb” as a source of more powerful X-rays. The “bomb” was a thick lead sphere containing a charge of cobalt which had been cooked in an atomic furnace until it was intensely radio-active.