CANCER RESEARCH

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXX, Issue 21596, 14 September 1933, Page 6

CANCER RESEARCH

RECENT DEVELOPMENTS / ADVANCES IN TREATMENT Recent advances in the treatment of cancer by surgery and radium treatment have been investigated by Dr. J. Russell Wells, of Ashburton, in the course of a six months' visit to England and the t Continent. Dr.* Wells, who is ah ex-superintend-ent of the Ashburton Hospital, and a member of the Hospital Board, stated in an interview that surgical operations were still favoured by-English doctors in their treatment of cancer in its early stages. The one exception waa , cancer in. the tongue, where it was found that radium was the most efficient and expeditious remedy. Advanced stages of cancer growth, however, responded more readily to radium treatment than to surgery. The most recent development in the / use of radium, continued Dr. Wells, was the radium 'bomb." With this method the effect was obtained by concentrated power from a distance on £he malignant growth. It required more radium and was therefore considered by leading doctors to be far too uneconomical. In the case of advanced abdofninal growths, however, it was more satisfactory than the usual treatment by needles. The radium "bomb" was used to a considerable extent in the Westminster Hospital, but formed only a part of ■ cancer treatment. Dr. Wells/said he was convinced that England was well abreast of the times / with regard to radium and surgical development* The cliiiics of Stockholm and Paris, where the pioneer research of cancer began, were studying new aspects of the causation and cure of cancer. The greatest obstacle to their progress and to that of all doctors was th% failure of people to realise the significance of cancer in its early stages.