THE CURE OF CANCER

Otago Witness, Issue 3768, 1 June 1926, Page 77

THE CURE OF CANCER

GREAT VALUE OF RADIUM. A SPECIALIST’S OPTIMISM. CHRISTCHURCH, May 24. “From the amount of success with which external cancer has been treated by radium J am entitled to believe that within this decade we will be able to look upon the disease as entirely curable,” said I)r Fenwick this morning. Dr Fenwick is in charge of the radium department at the Christchurch Hospital, and his statement was in rep)” to a question whether radium was used with any success in treating cancer. An American authority, Dr Francis Carter-Wood, had stated to the National Health Congress last week that surgery was the only effective means of treating internal cancer. He had added that the professional optimism regarding the curative value of radium and the X-rays was not warranted and that the public should realise that no cure for this disease had yet been found. “Surgery is certainly the only cure so far,” said Dr Fenwick, “but there are cases when the knife cannot remove the cancer, and the patient has to die in agony. This is where radium comes in, for, while the rays have not been able to reach deep enough to cure, they have removed many.of the distressing symptoms. The -patients’ lives have been lengthened, and where incurable cancer has killed them they have died with little pain. There are many people about the streets now who would not have been able to get about without treatment by radium.”

The doctor added that cases of external cancer had been cured by radium, and, therefore, it could not be considered that the internal disease, which was the same, was incurable. It was incurable only when a surgeon’s knife could not reach the growth without the grave risk of killing the patient.