RADIUM FOR CANCER.

Rangitikei Advocate and Manawatu Argus, Volume XXXIX, Issue 11003, 25 July 1914, Page 2

RADIUM FOR CANCER.

EFFICACY NOT PROVED

An adverse repmt upon the pro posal to establish a Radium lusfcitut® for the North Island, in which connection the Palmerston North Hospital Board recently sought the cooperation of the Auckland Hospital Board, was submitted to the latter body last night by Dr C E Blaguire, medical superintendent of the lies pital. He stated that, to hia mind, the proposal was at present a very debatable one In the letter from the Palmerston North Board it was stated that “there is little need to point ont that the use of radium is now beyond the experimental stage. ” This statement Dr Maguire disputed. “Radium, as a core for cancer, is still awaiting the sanction of time,” the superintendent said. In one of the latest medical journals from England it was said that “ it is not possible to give the assurance that radium Is a specific cure for cancer. Evidence is accumulating to show that it affords a very valuable method of treating cancer, hut, while there is an increasing number of oases which apparently have been cured by the application of radium, the time has not yet arrived when it can he said definitely that such promising cases are actually cures. ” Dr Maguire’s report proceeded: “A well known surgeon in Welling too told me that he had seen the direator of the Radium Institute in London within the last few months, who advised him that in his opinion the time was not ripe to go in largely for radium. Hia advice was to wait for about two years, by which time they hoped that more definite results would be available as to the value of radium as a cure for cancer.

“The price of radium at the present time in Australia is £3O per miligramme, which works out at over £I3OO for one grain,” continued Dr Maguire. “It is that not less than 50 milligrammes should be used in cases of cancer, so that £IOOO worth at least of radium would be required at a time for each treatment, This means that there must be an enormous outlay of money tu obtain sufficient radium to treat the eases of cancer in the North Island effectively. A burden such as this thrown on to the local bodies in the present state of knowledge would be, I think, unjustifiable. ” In conclusion, Dr Maguire suggested that the board should get into communication with the High Commissioner for New Zealand in London, the Hon Thomas Mackenzie, and ask him to obtain, if possible, from the director of the Radium Institute of London, an authoritative statement as to whether lie thought local bodies would be justified, In the present stats of knowledge of the subject, in making contributions towards the purchase of radium.

It was decided to reply to the Palmerston North Board in accordance with Dr Maguire's report. Incidentally the chairman, Mr J M Mennie, end some of the members remarked upon the fact, as mentioned in the edified news in the Herald yesterday morning, that German surgeons have abandoned radium as a cure 1 for cancer. —N.Z, Herald,