RADIUM HARNESSED

Evening Star, Issue 19000, 23 July 1925, Page 9

RADIUM HARNESSED

CAPTURE OF A VALUABLE GAS Radium has been “ harnessed,” am! tho feat was described as a modern miracle at tho annual meeting of the Middlesex Hospital governors. In the course of experiments designed to test a new method of distributing radium for the treatment of disease, S. A. Courtnuld told tho meeting (says the ‘ Weekly Scotsman ’) the emanations from radium—radon or radium gas—had boon captured, purified, condensed, and bottled in tiny tubes about tho thickness of a hair, called, owing to their shape, ‘‘seeds.” Each “seed” contains the equivalent of a dose of radium. Until radium had been captured and they wero able to bottle it for distribution, the Middlesex Hospital, in the interests of its cancer wing, had to husband its supplies, despite the fact that it holds the largest individual stock of any hospital in the world. Now, however, besides sending two radon “seeds” three times a week to St. Bartholomew’s, the hospital was in a position to supply these curative “sods” to other hospitals, By capturing the gas which would otherwise be wasted it was now possible _o multiply thousands of times the curative value of any given quantity of radium. It was actually a case of bottling and utilising wasting energy. To estimate tho value of each “ seed,” before it was sent out a “radon balance” had been designed, and was able to satisfy itself that the process of “bottling’’ had been successful, and that tlio “seed” would do its work on arrival at its destination. The “seeds” were being used both for external and internal treatment, and weie valuable in .-II cases in which radium itself would be used.

The Middlesex stock of indium was kept in the radon centre in a safe containing a block of load weighing one ton. The con tie, of the block in which the radium stock was placed was closed by a swing door of lead, whicp boro a curious resemblance to the breechblock of a heavy gun, Another interesting feature of the Middlesex radon centre was the laboratory, in which portions of tissue which had been exposed to the action of radium were prepared for microscopic examination.