NEW CANCER CURE

Waikato Independent, Volume XXI, Issue 2441, 8 September 1921, Page 5

NEW CANCER CURE

WONDERS OF X-RAYS

APPARATUS IN LONDON

GREAT RESULTS OBTAINED

A demonstration was given on June 23 of the'special X-ray apparatus for the treatment of cancer at the West London Hospital. The hospital authorities declare that if the treatment is given immediately cancer is diagnosed, it is hoped to effect cures in 86 per cent of the cases treated.

An army hut in the courtyard of the hospital in Hammersmith houses the new X-ray apparatus, which is the only equipment of the sort in an English hospital, and there are but two similar machines in Great Britain —one in Harley Street and the other in Glasgow'. The uses of the apparatus were ex: plained at the demonstration. Attached to the outstretched arm of an upright standard, the machine projects over the patient’s bed, controlling switches being in an apartmept shut off by a leaded partition. A funnelled base is lowered into close contact with the patient's body and around are spread leaded rubber wrappings. It was stated by the demonstrator that:, The X-rays work invisibly: there is no heat; no danger; no discomfort; precision in every detail is assured; one “treatment-" suffices; patients may be under X-rays for several hours. In the apparatus electrical current taken from the source that supplies lighting is. increased in tension to a voltage of about 200,000, which, roughly, doubles previous limits. The penetration and intensity of the rays are such as have never before been available for practical work.

Striking results arc reported from Bavaria, w'here the apparatus was designed by Dr Wintz in the women's hospital at Erlangen during the war. Out of 24 cases treated during 191 S, 20 aro classed as at least clinically cured. In the previous year's cases, without preliminary operation, 75 per cent were reported clinically cured. “It is important to note (says an official memorandum issued by the West London Hospital) that the highest percentage of cures is obtained only where the cases are subjected to treatment as early as recognised, and where there has been no preliminary operation. Radiologists are convinced that by the use of the new form of X-ray immediately cancer is diagnosed it will be possible to attain as much as SO per cent of cures in these eases. And even in eases where operation has already been tried, a conservative estimate puts the number of cures with the new treatment at double the number ev cr known hitherto." What “Cure” Means

“Clinically cured means we examine a patient who appears to be cured, and can-find no trace of the disease," said the hospital radiologist. “That has happened after an interval of three years, so that it- is quite fair to say the patient is clinically cured. Still, it raises false hopes to call it a cure for cancer. So long as cancer has the unfortunate property of disseminating itself in distant parts of the body there never will be a cure for cancel in the proper sense. We have known tor many years that the cancer cell can be destroyed if you give it a sufficient dose of X-rays. In the past the difficulty has been to apply that requisite dose to every part of the malignant grow'th. This new' technique is simply for the development of what we have been doing. We must have a case as early as it is recognised and before there has been any interference. If the disease has extended widely there’s no use in this method or any other in attempting to think that you are going to cure that patient. Another essential condition is that the patient's general health must be good. The treatmen is not useless utter anotlici operation, but the chances of success uic greater in the first instance. Mr G. T. Marshall, chairman of the hospital, mentioned that the cost of installing a machine is about £2OOO.

Concerning the new .treatment, the medical correspondent of the Daily Chronicle writes: ‘‘ln spite of the enormous amount- of work which cle\cr clever and ingenious brains have already expended upon the study of radiology, it is obvious that we are only at the threshold of the knowledge with which the X-rays are pregnant. The usefulness of these rays for locating bullets and similar simple purposes was more than amply demonstrated during the war, but knowledge of their curative powers made little or no progress during those eventful years. Since the war, and ,indeed, long before, it had been sadly and even dramatically brought homo to us that the constant handling of these rays, even by the most highly-skilled experts, was fraught with the gravest dangers to the operators, a fact which has recently been emphasised by the deaths of two very distinguished radiologists, one a Briton, and the other a Frenchman. Xow a weapon which is as powerful for evil as this has proved itself to be, might, if properly harnessed, surely be equally powerful for good. The harnessing is the trouble it is like belling the eat. Costly Knowledge

“It has long been known that Certain of these rays will penetrate normal tissue" painlessly and harmlessly, and yet. produce effects upon abnormal tissue which lies beneath. They will, for example, pass through skin and muscle, and yet produce a powerful effect upon the subjacent bone. Ihe acquirement of this knowledge was very mostly.and very trying; many are the vaic.ues of skin which have been

irremediably ruined by What are called soft rays in the learning process. This knowledge has been pushed further step by step. If was found that certain of the rays had a selective influence on certain tissues much in the same way as certain drugs, when taken by the mouth have a selective action upon certain organs; digitalis on the heart, for example, and bromides on the nerves. The application of to the cure of cancer is only a step further into a territory thus already conquered.

“We know that cancer consists of what is called embryonic tissue —seed cells as some one lias called them—and the rays which are called ‘hard’ rays have been shown to have a selective influence upon these seed cells. The problem then presented itself in this way: —‘It ought theoretically to be possible to get rays which are hard enough completely to destroy cancer cells which will nevertheless penetrate normal tissue without damage. The answer to this problem has now', it seems, been found by a Bavarian radiologist, and the apparatus which is the expression of his work is now plying its beneficent and wonder-working trade at the West London Hospital. The new factor in the ‘tube’, as it is called, is the production of a ‘new wave length,’ that is, a new ray, and there can be no doubt that if this new ray is not exactly the one which is wanted, one will soon be found, The door is open wide, and there is now reasonable hope that we arc within measurable distance of the cure of all cancer in its early stages.”