THE RADIUM CURE | A CASE THAT FAILED

Evening Post, Volume LXXXVII, Issue 74, 28 March 1914, Page 10

THE RADIUM CURE | A CASE THAT FAILED

FIFTY THOUSAND POUND DOSE. The cablegrams recently announced the fact that Mr. R. G. Bremner, a member of the United Congress, had ten tubes of radium applied to a can- i cerous growth in his neck. But in spite of that he died. The case is fully reported in the' New York Evening Post, one of the soberest of American papers. Mr. Bremner went to Dr. Howard Kelly's Baltimore sanatorium to try the radium treatment, after physicians in America and in Europe had vainly tried to cure him. It was found that the disease had made such inroads upon him that little could be done to help him, and that the fight against death < would be mado with all the odds against him. Mr. Bremner was optimistic, however, and tubes containing radium said to be worth' £50,000 were applied to the growth. ' For a time the patient seemed to improve, and ' members of his family frequently expressed the belief he would recover. They clung to this hope until Mr. Bremner was seized with a sinking spell. All the time he felt he would' recover, and while under radium he declared that he wanted to go back to Congress to fight for a Bill to have a Government-owned radium institute so that this mineral could be at the disposal of the rich and the poor alike. After the treatment began, Mr. Bremner issued the btatement through a friend .who visited him : — DYING MAN'S LAST WORDS. "Radium is wonderful, and it is most wonderful to those who have devoted most time to it 3 study. Even in my own case, the keen-eyed, observant physicians found it something that, in itself, more than repays me for coming here. "If experimenting on me has added a new fact to science, then my life has not been in vain, but has helped the race. My life is not worth one-tenth of the effort that has been put forth to save it. I am ready for the scrap heap, but feel that the cutting and the doctoring have added to the knowledge of how best to fight cancer. Some poor soul who comes after me may benefit. '"The question is not whether I am going to get well, but rather if I am going to live up to ideals for dying gamely, which are just as helpful to the race as living bravely. "Some day science will conquer cancer,' and I think I would rathei be in the category of those who were in the fight and nelped to win the victory than to be one of those who placidly reaped the benefit. "While radium may not mean a solution of the cancer problem, it will help. It has already taught what might be called the radium specialists that mechanical ingenuity may in some way produce the same wonderful effects, but that is still more or less conjecture. "Let me tell you a secret : lam likely to be the first to undergo this wonderful application of nature's magic radium rays, or more specifically the gamma rays of radium. "THERE IS MUCH TO LEARN." "There is much yet to learn. We are all like children crying in the night with no language but the cry. Everybody is good to me. Drs. Kelly, Birnham, and Lewis are fine men. They are devoted and consecrated to their work. Dr. Birnham gives day and night to the study of radium and his patients. Dr. Kelly is a most remarkable man, a most unusual man for such .an age. He seems to belong to an age of faith that' produces Wesley and others whose trust was firmly planted in a Divine Provid&ice, and a personal Saviour. He makes one think of Tennyson's tribute to his friend, 'From God and godlike men we get our trust.' "I will soon be well, soon be back at ■work, soon be overjoyed to greet those countless dear friends who have never forgotten me, and whose well-wishes have been my. chief support."