PROGRESS IN FIGHT AGAINST CANCER

Dominion, Volume 32, Issue 68, 13 December 1938, Page 11

PROGRESS IN FIGHT AGAINST CANCER

N.Z. Scientist’s Five Years’ Research In London

HOPES OF BEAM THERAPY

METHOD

("Domlnlou” Special Service: By Airmail.)

LONDON, November 26

Dr. T. Anthony Green, a New Zealand radiotherapist, is one ol three scientists who have worked for five years in a London laboratory, studying the effect of nYtssivc quantities of radium on cancer. The other- two workers are Miss Constance A. P. Wood, radiotherapist, and Mr. L. G. Grimmett, physicist, who installed the original radium plant at Westminster Hospital. They have worked in cooperation with Dr. Roy Ward, medical director of the Radium Institute.

An important advance in the campaign against cancer may be announced in the report on their first four rears’ work to be published shortly by'the Medical Research Council. This'was hinted this week by Sir William Bragg, president of the Royal Society, who declared that the research had proceeded “with no little success.”

Research has been conducted with a method known to scientists as “beam therapy,” in which use is made of massive irradiation from a large quantity of radium. A large unit of radium was lent by Belgium, and work began with two five gramme “bombs” of radium. A year later another five gramme “bomb” was obtained.

Attention was concentrated on the treatment of malignant conditions of the mouth, throat and upper air passages, and the Medical Research Council have recorded from time to time that the research was proceeding with encouraging results.