POSSIBLE FUTURE APPLICATIONS OF RADIUM.

New Zealand Mail, Issue 1648, 30 September 1903, Page 17

POSSIBLE FUTURE APPLICATIONS OF RADIUM.

In Germany and Franco radium is being successfully produced on a manufacturing scale, and the demand for it at £15,000 per ounce is far in excess of the supply. In America it is being eagerly prospected for. and tons of ore are being worked up experimentally in the, 'at present, apparently fruitless But in Brit air it is neither being produced nor is its manufacture seemingly being attempted. Some of the most hopeful and important of the uses to which radium can be applied are in the field of-medi-cine. With all who use the X rays, whether physicists or doctors, the crying complaint is the impossibility of regulating the charcter of the rays obtained, so as to be able to repeat with certainty any desired result. It is for thin reason that the use of X rays in the treatment of disease is attended capriciously sometimes with beneficial and at other times with decidedly harmful results. Radium, however, gives a beautifully constant and uniform supply of rays, and moreover possesses very many obvious advantages. Instead of the cumbrous focus tube nearly as large as a football, and the manifold and expensive items of an X ray outfit, a glass . tube, somewhat smaller than a toothpick, containing from one-tonth to one-fifth of a grain of radium, has already .been successfully employed in the treatment of cancer. Since the little tubes can’be inserted into -cavities no bigger than the nostril, it is obvious that a great many capias which could not possibly be successfully treated with X rays can easily be treated by -radium. A case of Mr Mackenzie Davidson at the Charing Cross Hospital may be cited as illustrating the work of British medical men in this field. A i rodent' cancer of the nose, which had recurred after operation amt had been treated unsuccessfully with X rays', was subjected to a short exposure to radium. Four ex-

posures aggregating about an hour wero given at intervals of a few days. In three weeks the diseased part was healing well, and in six weeks, after two further -exposures, the cancer had disappeared completely—almost miraculously as it.seemed, not leaving even a visible scar. A similar success with an otherwise incurable cancer was reported from Vienna, from the clinic of Professor Gussenbauer. It is wellknown that tho radium rays have powerful germicidal actions, and small animals like mice and caterpillars only live a few hours under their influence. When radium, which may bo put in a lead box an inch thick, is brought near the fore head of a person in a dark rco.ni, he experiences a flash of light on the retina of the eye, even when the eyelids are tightly closed. The blind apparently experience this sensation -also, and hence the explanation of the rumors that radium can make the blind

soo. The application of radium illuminating purposes would be perfectly practical if tho supply were somewhat more abundant than it is at present. A small fraction of an ounce of radium, properly employed, would prcbaoly provide a good light sufficient for several rooms, which, at any rate during the present century, would never need ionewai. A gram of radium on the best estimates at present available, is probably bold ling forth between ten and a hundred million projectiles per second, so that the light available from a gram of radium in this way probably amounts to several candle-power. With regard to other applications of radium to the supply of other forms of energy besides light,” for the ordinary work of the hs<l us trial world, these, so far as can be at present seen, will only become applicable if the avail ah a? supply of radium is increased beyond what seems at present possible. Radium contains an immense res'aivoir cf energy, sufficient to maintain its continuous powerful radiations over many centuries; but all attempts to increase its activity and make' it supply its energy at a faster rate have signally failed. Suppose that it is ever found possible to accomplish this, and to concentrate tho output of energy, which now is being dissipated over several centuries, into the space of time represented by a few days or weeks—-then there is not the least doubt of the result which would follow. Rutherford has calculated from h.i.s own experiments and those of Curie that the energy stored up in one gram of radium is sufficient to raise 500 tons a mile high. An ounce would therefore suffice to drive a 50 horse power motor car at the rate of thirty mile an hour round the world. This possibility cf our being able in the futuie to control the store of energy in radium and to liberate it for use as required at any desired rate, is of course the most interesting feature of radio-activity at the present time. But it must be confessed that science holds out scant prospects of its fulfilment. No suspicion of rt-s ultimate accomplishment lias as yet loomed above the horizon of practical possibilities. Our fathers busied themselves with speculating yvhat would beoome of us when the world’s supply of coal was - exhausted. A single step in science is needed for that problem to be answered in a manner beyond the dreams even of tho scientific novelist.