RESEARCH CENTRE

Te Awamutu Courier, Volume 79, Issue 7145, 14 December 1949, Page 3

RESEARCH CENTRE

STUDY OF CHRONIC DISEASES CONSTRUCTION IN UNITED STATES A new clinical centre housing the most modern equipment yet devised to combat chronic diseases is being’ ►built in the United States. The 14story, air-conditioned combined hospital and research centre is being constructed near Washington, D.C., for the National Institutes of Health, chief research branch of the U.S. Public Health Service. Its purpose will be the study and treatment of patients with such chronic afflictions as mental illness, - cancer, heart and circulatory ailments, diseases of metabolism, and some types of infectious and tropical diseases. The centre, which will be completed in 1952, is being established because U S. public health authorities believe that the world is on the threshold of a new era in medicine. “The conquest of many types of cancer, circulatory, and mental diseases”, says U.S. Surgeon General Leonard A. Scheele, “may come within our children’s lifetime, perhaps within our own. The next 30 years are certain to bring tremendous advances”. The centre will bring together the skills of physicians and of- laboratory researchers, and the discoveries of so-called pure science. In this way, new methods of combatting- chronic diseases can be evaluated more quickly and effectively than under present procedures in which the work is carried on by different hospitals with different medical staffs, the Health Service states. The new hospital will have facilities for 500 patients to be selected solely on the basis of their illness. Only those with the particular type of disease under study will be admitted. Patients from all over the United States will be accepted upon the recommendation of physicians or local hospitals and will be referred back to their physicians when treatment is completed. Dr Scheele points out that because the average stay will be longer than required for treatment of short-term illnesses every facility will be provided for the patients’ comfort. When completed, the centre will include a large radiation laboratory to provide facilities for applications of

new discoveries in the field of nuelear physics, including radioactive isotopes. Equipment will include a 12,-000,000-volt electrostatic generator, a synchroton, and a 2,000,000-volt radiotherapy machine. A 500-seat auditorium will be equipped with television so that operations and laboratory procedures that take place in various sections of the centre may be observed. In addition to the best in medical eare and treatment, patients at the centre will receive the latest in psychiatric, physical and vocational therapy.