RADIUM’S NEW WONDER.

Sun (Christchurch), Volume VII, Issue 2048, 7 September 1920, Page 8

RADIUM’S NEW WONDER.

MAKING DEAD HEARTS BEAT. Thirty years ago a wise physician walked the wards of a London hospital and devoted hours which others spend in bed to finding out why tadpoles and such tilings quickly die in pure distilled water and live in ordinary tap-water. Some people thought Sidney Ringer wasted his time over discovering that it was the traces of mineral salts in the tap-water which made all the difference. It was shown by Ringer that the heart cut out from a frog could be kept alive and vigorously heating for several days so iung as it was washed with a gentle stream of water containing a little sodium chloride (common salt), together with a trai-e of potassium chloride and calcium chloride in just the right amount. Since then the heart taken from a child, dead of pneumonia, has been revised and made to beat again, writes a professor of medicine in the “.'fail," Recently fresh interest has been given to Ringer's work, for a I'utch physiologist named Zwaar.iemaker has proved that (in- place of tin* potassium salt in E-nger’s solution can bo taken by radium or any other radio-active element suitably graded in strength. It need not be added to the watery solution of the other two salts; it suffices to hang >■;» an excessively minute quantity of the radium salt near the excised frog’s heart, The heart, irrigated with the solution of the other two salts, beats when the ra burn is brought near it, and stops beating when the radium is taken away.

The atoms of radio-active elements have been compared to volcanoes of infinite smallness shootiug out stones and ashes. The stones arc alpha rays—particles carrying a positive electric charge, the ashes beta rays—particles carrying a negative electric charge. Bombardment with either kind of rays keeps the heart beating, but the two together may have no effect, being of opposite electric charge. Zwaardemaker 'a discovery brings to fruition that of Ringer, and opens up for biologists and physicians new ideas and fields of research.