TREATMENT OF CANCER

Manawatu Standard, Volume XLVI, Issue 27, 31 December 1925, Page 2

TREATMENT OF CANCER

SUCCESS OF NEW METHOD. UTILISING SALTS OF LEAD. .LONDON, Nov. 21. Particulars of cancer research work carried on more or less in secret in Liverpool for some years past,-coupled with a declaration of a determination to “throw the cards on the table now the light 'was breaking,” have been given by Dr Adami, vice-chancellor of Liverpool University.

This follows the announcement made by Dr. W. Blair Bell at the TorontoAcademy of Medicine, whish has made a profound impression. He told of many cases of successful treatment of career by chemical agents. „In his cases he had used lead. Out of 200 cases, mostly hopeless, treated, 50 patients were well.

“Cancer research work has been going on in Liverpool for nearly five years,” said Dr. Adami. “The first case was a very remarkable success. Since then some 200 cases have been treated, not by Professor Blair Bell alone, but under the general supervision of a committee of his professional colleagues, who, during the last two years, have been associated with him in a regularised system of co-operative work. The clinical and scientific work was carried out by a body of more than 20 surgeons and medical men, many of them experts in their own particular lines. Professor Blair Bell was its chairman and director.

ON TRACK OF BETTER RESULTS

“A great difficulty,” Dr. Adami added, “has been that we are dealing with a very poisonous' substance in this lead treatment, and our chief care has been to determine how far to go with its administration, giving the largest safe dose with the least danger to the body, in short, to obtain some method of treatment that can _be used generally for a long time. "Vv o have been hampered by the difficulty that this substance, when-we had prepared it, degenerated almost . immediately, but we hope now we have got on the track of better results in that respect. “Altogether Professor Blair Bell has been engaged upon this subject for 16 or 17- years, but most of that’ time his work was done in his own private laboratory. It is only in the later stages that the work has been conducted on the co-operative lines mentioned. Some of the cases have been treated in Professor Blair Bell’s own privato hospital, but latterly we have' made use of beds in the Northern and Southern Hospitals and the Royal Infirmary, so that members of the staffs of’the three great hospitals are now acquainted with the principles of treatment. When Professor Blair Bell’s experiments . and researches reached a certain stage he felt he could not assume undivided responsibility for their further development, so ho communicated what he had discovered to his friends, and they supported him in the progressive development of the principle. “SHARPLY EDGED' TOOLS.” “It is just because the light is breaking, and we are able to see our way more clearly., and because so many patients who were declared to be inoperable are now back to their normal way of life, .that we throw our cards on the table. It would be impossible to keep the matter privato any longer. If other medical institutions organised to deal with the subject with the thoroughness and care it demands approach us, we shall admit them to a knowledge of the methods. We should have to say, ‘These are our methods, come and see them,’ but we should take great care to see that the treatment is given only by those who have.learned the methods evolved hero, and who know the exact proportion of lead salts that we have eventually, established.

“We are dealing, let it lie remembered, with sharply edged tools. There is in the result a great difference between putting something into the body which-will Jail-the- cells of a tumour and something which will kill tho cells of the l-est'of 'the-body, but so far us tho dose is concerned the process is a very fine me. Jt is not a process which can be p u into ihe hands of Tom, Dick, or Harry. A gratifying feature is that a large number of cases have gone two, three, tour and, in one instance, five years without any sign of recrudescence.”