MORE ABOUT RADIUM.

Colonist, Volume LVI, Issue 13420, 18 March 1914, Page 2

MORE ABOUT RADIUM.

Radium,, the nosers and properties of which are as yet but very partially defined, owing to its scarcity and value, exists, it appears, in everything. The huge difficulty is that it can only be extracted in the most minute particles as the result of tedious and expensive processes. Recently, it seems, the scientific world was electrified by the statement that it had been discovered in considerable quantity in coal. The alleged discovery was so well supported that it produced no little excitement. Eminent scientists lost no time in. fen--tering the field of exploration, But alas! only to find that they had been and myself, we have found in grisow announcement was speedily demolished by a French professor. "There is a modicum of truth in the announcement," he reports, "for radium is to be found everywhere in nature—in the earth, gnd under the earth, in mineral rock, mineral water, gases, and probably in the ashes of all vegetable matter as well. We have at our disposal methods of extraordinary delicacy in the investigation of radium, and they enable us to detect its presence withgreat sureness. Now, as to the facts as regards the researches of M. Lepage and myself, we have found in prison (firedamp) great quantities of helium. Helium is a gas engendered by radioactive substances. The question arose whether this helium could not come from radio-active substances in coaJ. We therefore pursued our investigations in this direction with coal from our grison mine, and we found infinitessimal traces, of radium and phorium, but the quantities are far too small to explain the presence of so much helium in our grison. . . . As for any economic results —I refer to the extraction of radmm from coal —that is entirely out of the question." JhAmerican philanthropist, it is said, is considering the idea of expending £3,000,000 on the construction, in different parts of the United States, cf 20 hospitals for the treatment by radium of canepr and other diseases.—Dunedin "Star."