HIGH POWER X-RAYS

Otago Daily Times, Issue 22628, 20 July 1935, Page 19

HIGH POWER X-RAYS

IMPORTANT DEVELOPMENTS TREATMENT OF DISEASE. Important developments in the treatment of disease by X-rays are pending in Britain. St. Bartholomew’s Hospital is preparing plans for a million-volt X-ray apparatus, which will be the most powerful in the country. It will approach the equivalent of radium treatment as already undertaken with X-rays at the California Institute of Technology, at Pasadena, and at Chicago. A special building will be needed to house the powerful plant necessary. The London County Council’s Hammersmith Hospital, attached to the new British Post-graduate Medical School, is preparing specifications for a 500,000volt X-ray installation. The London Cancer Hospital has its own distinct plans. Radiation from radium, a medical authority explained to a representative of the Morning Post, is equivalent to X-rays of between 1,200,000 and 2,000,000 volts. The higher the voltage used in the generation of. X-rays the shorter the w'aye-length produced, and one of the chief objects of these new installations is to test the belief that the medical efficacy of radium radiation is due to the shortness of the wave-length. If this belief is justified it should be possible to produce similar effects 1o those of radium by suitably high voltage X-rays. It may be, however, that the characteristic effects of radium are partly due to the different mode of application.

“ The practical difficulty,” it was added, “is to secure X-ray tubes which will * stand up ’ under normal working conditions to the high voltages necessary. There is a close analogy to the car which is guaranteed to do 80 miles an hour. It will run at 70 miles an hour until further notice, but to run it at its top speed for more than a few miles on end is to ask for trouble.”

Another authority expressed the belief that within 12 months it would be possible to produce the equivalent of 1,000,000 to 2,000,000-volt X-rays without the necessity of employing the high electrical pressures which were at first sight necessary. “The technical problem has been solved,” he said. “It will then be possible to use X-rays equivalent to radium radiation without any need for the expensive and elaborate equipment which is now necessary.”