CANCER SCOURGE

Northern Advocate, 22 July 1935, Page 4

CANCER SCOURGE

TREATMENT BY RADIUM.

STILL QUESTIONABLE,

r Per Press Association. — Covyright.l CHRISTCHURCH, This Day.

“The radium treatment of cancer is in the melting pot,” said Dr. P. Stanley Foster, the well-known surgeon, who returned to Christchurch on Saturday, in summarising the experience he had gained in leading hospitals in Canada and the United States, which he visited during his recent tour.

In some cases excellent results were obtained with radium, said Dr. Foster, but at the Toronto General Hospital, which had probably the finest record of research in the British Empire, the specialists were so unhappy with the results they obtained with radium that they had sent one of their staff to “spy out the land” in Europe and

determine whether better results were being obtained there.

Instead of the direct mettalic radium treatment, radium emanations — evanescent substances which were encased in gold shells and soon lost their potency—were being used at the Memorial Hospital in New York. A similar method had been used in Christchurch, said Dr. Foster, the shells being “planted” by means o' tubes in parts of the body where access was difficult. A deep X-ray treatment has also been developed in New York, concerning which research workers were very hopeful.