CANCER RESEARCH

Greymouth Evening Star, 29 April 1925, Page 3

CANCER RESEARCH

EXPERIMENTS ON BEANS ' . ' ... (Special to “Star.’’) x - ■ CHRISTCHURCH, April 28. " Along the wall of the radium laboratory at the Christchurch Hospital, is an array of lanky bean plants, climbing infiocently Out of liquidfilled test tubes/’They are not, although they might appear to be, part of a scheme for mural decoration, nor do they represent the beginning of a design to replace the kitchen garden, should that site ultimately be required for; the nurses’ home. Those eighteen test tubes, with their sprouting dr lifeless beans, may. show the' road to health, to sufferers wasted by the scourge of < cancer, for they are part of a long, almost an endless series of experiments by which Dr. P. C. Fenwick and his assistant are tiding to find the weak points in the armour of the disease, t ( A “Press” Jrepresentative paid a Visit to the experimenters to-day ,and lhey explained their work. The bean plants, it seemed, were made for the purpose of the experiments to represent the tumours, the cancer growths in the human patients. “We use beans in place of human beings,” Dr. Fenwick explained, absolutely without a twinkle. “All the beans are given ‘a clean start’ on wet blotting paper, and when they have germinated, a single bean is fixed at the top of each test tube. Some of the test tubes contain water and technically known a£ ‘controls,’ they form a standard by which the others can be judged. Into other tubes are put solutions of various drugs. Each bean is treated to Radium rays for a certain length of time, the radium grain, encased in a leaden" box, being placed over the seed. Some of the beans have made abnor- . mal growth. Others are stunted, . while some have been killed alto- j gether.” , i “By treating the beans to different ] strengths Of radium we have been ] trying to find out three things,” said I Dr. Fenwick. “By observation we i :ound that a small ’irritation’ dose < jaused stimulation and increased the T growth Of the plant, but on con- v ItiiilnH* the treatment, a time Was

LIII Lillig - LlltJ Li cdblllulll, Cv . LlliltJ »V CIO L reached when the bean was killed. The first object is to find when the , period of stimulation stops, and the ' killing begins. In order to cure cancer, we must use sufficient time to 3 kill and not stimulate the cancer cell, 1 which is of the same construction as I the bean cell. The series of experi- . ments will be solutions of different . drugs, to find means of increasing . the susceptibility of cells to the ac--1 tion of radium. We may find that the - action of a particular drug helps to 1 kill the plant under radium more 3 quickly. If we prove that, then we 1 might employ the drug on human be--3 ings, in the hope that the cancer cell ■ would be made more susceptible to 1 the radium. We are also trying to de-’ termine any additional medicine to 3 give patients at the same time that radium treatment Is . being administered, to better their health, so that it may resist the poison set up by the cancer growth in the tissues, t The three objects are (1) the length of the radium treatment, (2) a means • of making the growth more suscepl tible and (3) a means of increasing - the internal resistance. 5 It will be months before the experimenters get what the doctor i called an “answer”. “It is only the - beginning of an experiment in can- • cer research, 1 ” he concluded, “and the 3 task is endless’’ He mentioned that 3 experiments with radium on that • strange living substance, yeast, were ’ also being carried out, and so it ; seems that the unpretentious broad bean may give a far more subtle service to mankind than even the “bapk I to the greens” people dreamed of. • INSULIN TREATMENT ’ “After nearly two years experience I .with insulin, we are entirely satis--5 fled with its efficacy in the treatment . of diabetes,” a medical expert at the 1 Christchurch Hospital told a reporter r to-day. “The insulin treatinent and 1 the dietary regulations hate proved > a boon to sufferers, to an extent I known only to the sufferers, and not i appreciated by the general public.” ; From a few kcore units of insulin ■ used per week, two years ago, the ■ amount had increased until at hospi- ’ tai alone 8000 units were used week- " ly. At present over 30 people were receiving regular treatment for dia- ! betes. 1 The Doctor emphasised the necessity for the early investigation of suspected ’ cases and early treatment. When people who were blind or crippled came little could be done for the diseases had reached an advanced stage. If a person were treat- . ed early enough, blindness could not supervene. Some people were afraid of insulin, because they believed that 1 it was a narcotic similar to opium, ‘ but there was no danger of a patient , becoming a drug addict.