CANCER FIGHT

Taranaki Daily News, 6 September 1935, Page 13

CANCER FIGHT

WOMAN DOCTOR’S DEVOTION. BECAME VICTIM OF DISEASE London, July 25. After devoting her entire working life to the study of cancer, Dr. Helen Chambers has died a victim of the disease she has helped many to defeat. When her remains were cremated, Middlesex Hospital celebrated the centenary of its medical school, and many missed Dr. Chambers—a familiar figure for the past 25 years. She did more than any other woman in the country to bring relief to cancer sufferers. No woman doctor had a more brilliant career than Dr. Helen Chambers. In 1903, at tho age of 24, she became pathologist to the Royal Free Hospital. In 1909 she won the Richard Hollins Research Scholarship at the Middlesex Hospital. From that time onward she devoted her great mental capacities to cancer research and the treatment of cancer patients. Professor Sidney Russ, Professor of Physics at Middlesex Hospital, and Scientific Secretary for the National Radium Commission, said that Dr. Chambers was an “utterly modest, retiring and selfless person." .... ......... She was the pioneer in applying experimental knowledge to the treatment of woman cancer patients. After the war Dr. Chambers conducted cancer research under the Medical Research Council. She became more and more convinced that women doctors should unite to give what help they could to alleviate women suffering from the disease.

In 1925 she persuaded four hospitals—the Royal Free, the Elizabeth Garrett Anderson, the South London and the New Sussjcx Hospital, Brighton—to cooperate as a group in the radium treatment for cancer.

As a result the Marie Curie Hospital, at Hampstead, came into being in 1930. This was due, as Professor Russ explained, to the energy and the vision and the devotion of Dr. Chambers.