WONDERFUL RADIUM.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 778, 30 March 1910, Page 5

WONDERFUL RADIUM.

SIR WILLIAM RAMSAY ON ITS PROPERTIES. WHAT IT CAN/CURE. There was an interesting discussion at the Authors' Club oil "Radio-ac-tivity." Mr. H. Rider Haggard presided, and Sir "William Ramsay (Professor of Chemistry at London University) was the principal guest. Sir William congratulated Mr. Haggard on liaviug predicted in "She" the discovery mado nine years ago by Madame Curio. There were, he said, three kinds of rays emanating from radium. Professor Rutherford and, another scientist supposed that radium changed entirely into dilferent products, emitting ai various stages'of its decomposition alpha particles. The change appeared to be into gas. Here was radium changing, and in a sense, doing what the alchemists tried to do. but with the difference that - the _ alchemists tried to change elements into gold or precious metals, whereas radium went on, and nothing could stop it. To the gas Rutherford gave . the name "emanation." It was 1 a mysterious sort of exhalation. How long would radium last - if' it we're always changing-into that gas? "My answer," ■ said Sir "is for ever. It looks a paradox, "but 1 it is not. The amount given off is always proportional to the amount' of radium there. "W© can tell, however, how long it will take radium to half-change'into .the emanations, and the. time we have just measured in our.laboratory is 1750 years, so that if anyone feels' inclmcd to invest in radium he will retain hair his capital for 1750 years." Sir "William mentioned that radium was the most concentrated form of energy which they knew, and its emanations 1 went oil changing , into other • things, each of which had a name. '

There was Radium A, wSiich lived for a quarter of an hour,, and then changed into Radium B, which in its turn lived three-quarters of an hour: -Radium C lived for haJf an houn, and in the course of two or three hours. all these three substances had been produced and had disappeared. Then, came h fairly long-lived substance Radium D, which was half gone in forty years.' _ It gave one time to look. at it, and it was, a lead-like substance with a metallic lustre. Then there was. Radium EI and. E"2, and Radium F, which, was probably, identical- with the polonium discovered by Madame Curie in pitchblende. ■ They had the greatest con:centrated energy known, . and he doubted if they would ever , get any greater. Scientists, however, were always in a state of doubt, and he doubted his own assertions.. The'alpha rays..shot out at a rate of. between 15,000 and 40,000 miles a second, and carried energy, but they had to be caught.

"Up to the present," continued Sir William, "it has been said that 'radium cures cancer. I do not think it is by ,any means certain; I, think it is exceedingly , doubtful, but it has not been rightly tried, and all we can say is that there have been things done s which are.favourable .to that suggestion. ..In a recent .'Lancet' there, .is a, : case which, if. not cured,, Wcls .'ameliorated, and life prolonged, by radium.-.' The Radium Institute is for the purpose of making experiments of this kind in large quantities and under efficient control-;' but although -wo may postpone decision with regard to the cure ■of cancer, there can be no postponing -it with regard to the cure'of rodent ulcer. : It. is ■ a dead certain cure for that! -.If any of you caa pass that on, do it," because you. may save a great deal of misery if you do. There has not been one single case of failure, except where the disease.-had. spread .to an awful -extent before, the begun." ' -\ '