CANCER CURE

Inangahua Times, 27 September 1913, Page 4

CANCER CURE

ENCOURAGING RESULTS IN LONDON.

GROWTH DISAPPEARS ASTOUND, I INGLYv 1

LOM)ON, Sept.: 19. The surgeon of the Middlesex Hospital announces remarkable results in the last six mouths in treating Advanced cancers Svith He says it is inadvisable use lie word I 'cured, 5 ' feWfl growths have disappeared is a truly, astounding manner , The hospital is handicapped by lack of radium ; sometfmes a single patient is using the whole of the 144 milligrammes of radium wiifcli the hospital possesses tot hours, so that n'O other treatment is possible, and hundreds of patients are waiting their turn* The need is the greater because small doses of radium are fouil to bS Useless, Marvels of Radium. Two tiny pieces of radium are locke 1 up in s Safe a! the Middlesex Hospital (says a London paper). They are worth £2OOO. Although scarcely visible to the naked eye, they have conferred incalculable benefit on sufferers if promptly applied, can effect a cure. "Although radium can be used ovor and over again," said the resident medical officer of the hospital "the amount hero is not elloUgh when the work for it to 3o Is taken into consideration. We can do with a good deal more. Our two pieces of radium are at the present time being used in eight cases of rodent ulcer out of a largo number requiring attention. If we use the whole of the £2OOO worth in one case, the other seven have to wait. You <»n imagine how much more good could be effected if we had more radium.

"Wo had not enough radium here to treat one woman suffering from cancer, and had to send hor td the Radium Institute, where £SOOO worth—a piece as largo as a pin-head—was employed for ten days to fight the disease from which she was suffering. In another case—a woman suffering from cancer—we are using tho wholo of our radium every three weeks, and wc hope to prolong her life. "Tho radium is placed 011 the end of a metal . rod insido a glass tube. Placed near tho wound, tho radium immediately starts to kill tho malignant cells, and thus enables us to operate. "Tho smaller of our two pieces of indium was lost in a patient some time ago, and it was only recovered with, difficulty, after considerable anxiety. "The uso of radium, and the way it works, may be 'demonstrated by magnifying it on a specially-treated screen. The atoms which are seen flying off look likd billions of stars in a very dark sky. Though tho radium is all tho whilo losing these atoms in itj fight against disease, there is apparently 110 differßncfl in the sine of tho piece as seen by the naked eye." Wonderful Work, The following is an account of a woman's experiences as a patient under radium treatment< "If thero are still people who are ignorant of the incalculable blessing bestowed 011 mankind by that wonderful substance, radium, I think tho story of my experience as a sufferer from rodent ulcer must be of interest, There is no more dreadful disease than that from which I suffered, amounting to external cancer of tho face and entailing suffering that cannot be described. I need not speak of tho months which preceded my admission to the hospital—months of intolerable pain from tho terrible affliction, which necessitated the use of a heavy black vei even in my own home. I was takon to London, and visited the specialist at a certain hospital, who said radium treatment was my only hope. "The day came for my first experience of the treatment, and I was led by a soft-voiced nurse into a sunny room. Thero was no operating table or complicated mechanism of arc lamps and metal shields. Instead there was an armchair and a bowl of sweetsmelling lilies. A kind old man in a frock-coat, with gloved hands, was bending ovor a small table. He was j holding a tiny metal cylinder between his finger and thumb. It seemed impossible that this was all the paraphernalia, necessary to perform which would have been hopeless by any other means. Yet this was all 1 ever saw during any one of the six visits to tho sunny room which I paid before I left it for eVer, cured and only slightly scarred.

I Cured. I "The doctor attached the cylinder, winch was about the size and shape of a date stone, to a live-inch length of flexible bright metal wire. This wire he twisted to hook over my loi't oar, as spectacles do, so that the cylinder rested over my cheek. Over tho cylinder l)o fixed a length of plaster to keep it in position, and then handed me a daily newspaper. Read that for an hour or two,' he said, and left me. The nurse told m© I .should hav« to sit there for five hours, which I did. 1 left tho sunny room after my [first five hours trying to make mvS3lf believe that this would really mean life to mo. It seemed so simplo that i could hardly boliove it could cure mo. For fivri days I continued my daily visits, and then tho doctor came to mo again and said that I was about to experience a 'reaction,' which would I W0 fool very ill, perhaps, for a [fortnight. I must not think that I vas "uorso, for it was really a sign that I wag being cured. Sure enough, tho ronction came. The horror afflicting mo appeared to bo evon worsd than boforo and the agony roturned. It was .nearly a fortnight boforo I had my r.ext fivo hours' treatment, and from that day onward it is almost impossible to describe what happened almost before my oyes. Still less possible is it to toll of my joy. "Every day tho rodont ulcer steadily decreased, and I slept—slept at "ight and slept in tho sunny room while tho wonder-working tube was in place. Af, tho end of Die sixth setting I left—cured, nwl with n faco my ' olliltlron mmM Wbs."