CANCER SCOURGE

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XXV, Issue 162, 25 June 1935, Page 9

CANCER SCOURGE

Methods of Treatment

RADIUM AND SURGERY By Telegraph—Press Association. WELLINGTON, June 24. The apparent increase of cancer during recent years was discussed by Dr. C. C. Coghlan, a prominent medical practitioner in Sydney, who was interviewed on’ his arrival by the Maunganui from San Francisco. He has returned from a tour of the United States and Canada after investigating, the methods adopted in the medical world there. Cancer he said appeared to be on the increase. The expectation of life was ten years longer to-day than 25 years ago, and cancer was seldom apparent until after 40. This meant that more people were susceptible to the disease than a quarter of a century ago, the expectation of life now being 55 as against 45 years. Dr. Coghlan said that one of the best radium clinics he had seen was in Toronto. Throughout the United States, except in New York and San Francisco, very little importance was placed on radium treatment. Surgery was preferred. On the other hand, in Toronto there had not been an operation for uterine cancer for 14 years, and when he went through the records he found that the results were as good as or even better than in places were operations were preferred. The radium treatment was more drastic than that used in Sydney, as larger doses of radium were used. When he left Sydney he thought that radium treatment was pretty hopeless, but now he was feeling more hopeful about it. TREATMENT IN BRITAIN New X-Ray Tube Replaces Radium LONDON, June 24. The “News-Chronicle” says that the Fulham Cancer Hospital has installed a new X-ray tube at a cost of £7OO. It treats cancer as effectively as radium, which costs £lO,OOO a gram. The apparatus was invented in Germany, where further radium purchases could not be afforded. A total of 50,000 people die annually from cancer in Britain. The Fulham Hospital authorities anticipate that all cancer patients can be treated in future.