Slow Death By Radium Poisoning

Greymouth Evening Star, 28 September 1928, Page 9

Slow Death By Radium Poisoning

A Tragic Story

S DOMED to living deaths, their bodies transformed into crumblinglaboratories of destructive atomic warfare, five young American ' women are patiently awaiting the day when the deadly rays of radium put an,end to their sufferings. For years, according'' to the young women, they painted watch dials with lumirious paint containing minute quantities of radium salts. The deadly alpha rays of radium, carried in unbelievably small amounts to the lips on .brush tips, entered their bodies and lodged for ever in their tissues. Physicians say they are slowly dying from the results of the terrific bombardment going on within their bodies —a - bombardment science is unable to stop. Like scores of martyrs who have gone before them, the young women are standing on the frontiers of science and are being blasted by the weird forces of the tui-

seen world. Dr. S. A. von Soshocky, inventor of the radium paint which is said to have doomed the five New Jersey women to a slow death, is a victim of his own invention. Although the doctor was loath to talk about himself (writes Theodore Maisch in an American exchange), marks of the inroads of illness were plainly evident. His front teeth are gone and his lingers up to the second knuckle are black, the result. of radium necrosis. Radium first took effect on him in 1920, and only because of his ability to keep an accurate scientific check on himself has he been able to withstand the disease. There is in the Philadelphia General Hospital a little room where death lurks at every step, literally a chamber of a million deaths. In the centre of the. tiled chamber is a thing of twisting 'glass tubes and bulbs. Here and there one sees a dull red glow from heated copper coils. Dancing mercury in several of the pear-shaped glass bulbs bubbles with a faint sound. Occasionally there is the long-drawn wheeze of a suction pump. It is a place to shun. The innocent-looking apparatus holds in ldash a minute portion of the invisible world, yet so pregnant with destruction and power that were it suddenly to break its bonds and release at one onslaught the full measure of its pent-up forces it would visit upon the world one of the greatest catastrophes. “I rarely go into the room!” The speaker was Dr. J. L. Weatherwax, associate professor of radiology, Graduate School of Medicine of the University of Pennsylvania, a head of the radiological department of the Philadelphia General Hospital. Pointing to' a small closet at the end of the apparatus, Dr. Weatherwax said: “In there is our supply of radium. The quantity is two grammes. It is continually breaking down, and the escaping atoms are drawn and carried through the tubes until the particular atoms we need—the emanation, which is a gas—arrive at the end and are captured in these tiny glass tubes and sealed.” He reached'behind him and from a receptacle of lead many inches in thickness took a tiny hairlike tube about one-sixty-fourth of an inch in thickness and about a quarter of an inch long. “That tube with others like it will be planted in the cancerous tissues of a patient,” he said, holding the object on the tip of. his finger. “There is enough radium emanation in there to last about fifteen days. It exerts enough energy to have a healing influence on a one-half-inch cube of diseased tissue.” The healing energy is the gamma rays. But even these, if they are permitted to bombard human tissue long enough, will cause the same destruc

tion' as the more deadly alpha rayg. Distance and adequate thicknesses of lead are the most effective measures Of protection, Dr. ’ Weatherwax said. He indicated a. heavy threepanel screen, nine feet high, at one end of the bubbling apparatus behind' which the worker was seated. The object was more than an inch thickformed of solid lead. As Dr. Weatherwax continued his explanation, it became clear that the complicated apparatus did not manufacture radium emanation, but formed an avenue in which the natural breaking down of the radium itself may continue without danger to workers and in an orderly .manner. Radium, Dr. Weatherwax said, is in a continuous state of suicide, smashing and breaking itself to bits at a most bewildering rate, changing from solid to gas and back again several times before it reaches the end of its life, which, strangely enough, is common, ordinary lead. But it takes years —thousands of years, in fact —for this prolonged suicide to reach an end. The apparatus before which Dr. Weatherwax stood was nothing more or less than a very delicately adjusted prison in which alpha, beta and gamma rays were segregated and only the beneficent rays allowed to enter the tiny “seeds." ( Now, what actually has happened to the unfortunate women was that they transformed their bodies into a living apparatus in which the radium substance was permitted unrestricted freedom—walking radium laboratories in which the shooting atoms continually break through body cells, disturb the chemical balance therein and kick

up havoc in general. Scientists do not know what actually happens within a human cell during’the invasion of either of the three rays of radium. It is known, however, that the gamma rays used in cancer treatments will stimulate the growth of a fibrous protecting wall around diseased cells. But if it is applied too long it will burn up or destroy tissue ah readily as that pariah of the radium family—the alpha ray. And if it is applied to the extent of irritation it will cause the very disease it has been found in some cases to “cure,”

or arrest. » The 'radium or X-ray treatment for f disease, Dr. Weatherwax said, is readily controlled. There is no aftereffect and the body does not store up any of the ray particles. In the case of the victims of radium poisoning, he pointed out, the actual substance, according to testimony, had entered the bodies of the women and cannot be dislodged. Science has been unable to find a way of withdrawing those particles or of neutralising their . effects. Even Mme. Curie, discoverer of radium, recently was reported to have said that their cases are hopeless. They will live until some vital function of the body is disturbed or interrupted. But scientists have learned a tragic lesson in the deaths of the pioneers. Even the smallest tube, or “seed,” of gamma rays is handled with forceps and as far away from the body as the arms will carry it. And when not in use the tiny objects are safely housed in lead containers of many inches in thickness. • > ■ . For the gamma rays, travelling at the speed of light, 186,000 miles a second, have been known to pierce eight inches of lead and twelve inches of iron.