RADIUM HARNESSED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXXII, Issue 19365, 23 July 1925, Page 5

RADIUM HARNESSED

CAPTURE OF A VALUABLE GAS. Radium has been ‘‘harnessed,’’ and the feat was described as a modern miracle at the annual meeting of the Middlesex Hospital governors. In rhe course of experiments designed to test a new method of distributing radium for the treatment of disease, 8. A. Courtauld told the meeting, says the Weekly Scotsman, the emanations from radium—radon or radium gas —had been captured, purified, condensed, and bottled in tiny tubes about the. thickness of a hair, called, owing to their shape, “seeds.” Each “seed” contains the equivalent of a dose of radium. Until radium had been captured and they were able to bottle it for distribution. the Middlesex Hospital, in the interests of cancer wing, had to Busband its supplies, despite the fact that it holds the largest individual stock of any hospital in the world. Now, however, besides sending two radon “seeds” three times a week to St. Bartholomew’s, the hospital was in a position to supply these curative “seeds” to other hospitals. By capturing the gas which would otherwise bo wasted, it was now possible, to multiply thousands of times the curative. value of any given quantity of radium. It. was actually a case of bottling and utilising wasting energy. To estimate the value of each “seed,” before it was sent out a <<radon balance” had been designed, and was able to satisfy itself that the process of “bottling seed” had been successful. nnd that the “seed” would do its work on arrival at its destination. The “seeds’’ were being used both t’.ir external and internal treatment, and were valuable in all cases in which radium itself would be used. The Middlesex stock of radium was kept in the radon centre in a safe containing a block of load weighing one ton. The centre of thr block in which the radium stock was placed was closed by a swing door of lead, which boro a curious resemblance to the breech lock of a heavy gun. Another interesting feature, of the Middlesex radon centre was the laboratory, in which portions of tissue which had been exposed to the action of radium wore prepared for microscopic examination.