CANCER TREATMENT

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 217, 11 June 1935, Page 8

CANCER TREATMENT

Highly Efficient Standard in Great Britain PROFESSOR BELL’S RETURN After a trip abroad to study developments in surgery and advances in teaching methods, Professor F. Gordon Bell, of the chair of surgery in the University of Otago, Dunedin, returned to New Zealand yesterday by the Makura from Sydney. He was accompanied by Mrs. Bell. So far as cancer treatment was concerned, he said, the organisation had reached a high standard of efficiency in Great Britain. The main hospitals all had their cancer clinics with a special medical oflicer in charge. Dealing with advances in radiotherapy, Professor Bell said that several of the hospitals were trying out cheap, low-voltage X-ray apparatus for the treatment of superficial cancer eases. This form of treatment had been used in Germany with success, and might be used as a substitute for radium when radium was not readily available. Great interest attached to the treatment of cases of malignant disease by beam-therapy involving the use of a radium “bomb.” This “bomb” consisted of five grams of radium and was being experimented with in cases of cancer of the mouth and throat. During the period that beam-therapy had been under investigation it had yielded promising results, but the cases treated by it would necessarily require observation over a period of years before any. Anal conclusion could be drawn. In several of the small hospitals smaller “bombs” of one gram capacity were being used.