RADIUM

Gisborne Times, Volume XXVII, Issue 2455, 20 March 1909, Page 4

RADIUM

THE WONDERFUL HEALER. “Politics are again subordinate by comparison with the latest .step in that marvellous movement towards the elimination of pain which is perhaps the greatest process of our time,” says the London “Observer.” “At the instance of the King, and by the equal munificence of two generous donors, Sir Ernest Cassel and Lord Iveagh, there has been founded in this ; country a Radium Institute. Events of this kind are of quintessential signi.ficance for social progress—and therefore ■' in the long run for political—and yet they attraek less attention than a factious squabble or a diplomatic manoeuvre. So enslaved are the mass of men by the routine of imagination. WHAT RADIUM MAY DO. “But what dees the new departure mean? It opens up almost infinite possibilities, not only in remedying dkfigurement, but in destroying disease and restoring sound tissue. The experts who will supervise the Institute—it will be the best equipped in existence —are bound to warn us against premature expectations, but they themselves dare to dream of epoch-making results. Radium is in one respect like electricity, gravation, and life itself. We know how it acts, but not what it is. The beneficence of light is the com-mon-place of our whole being, and radium as an intense curative agent may compare with ordinary pure light almost as that does with mere darkness. “Associated \vith -a strong committeeof scientific experts, the chairman of the new Institute is Sir Frederick Treves. He will hardly be regarded as a heedless enthusiast, yet his statement of the chances of the future in his lecture at the London Hospital recently. _ was more wonderful and daring in its suggestions of hope than the visions of •Prometheus Unbound.’ Sir Frederick described bow, by the treatment which the Radium Institute proposes to develop, excrescences, lumps under the skin, scars, and birthmarks may be removed. tumors and ulcers may be cured, and yet this agent, though it can be terrible if misused, can be made to search out by seme stimage selective power what it- is meant to. work on, and leave sound tissue unaffected. It may be that consumption and cancer alike may yield to radium. “The thorough research -now to be carried on in this country will be a great voyage of discovery, "inrcugh strange seas of thought.’ Sir Frederick Treves says that ‘if radium ever sinks to being worth its weight in gold, it will be exceedingly cheap.’ In the first place, more radium is required. ‘The great difficulty,’ said an expert at the Middlesex Hospital, ‘is to get enough of the substance to give it a fair chance.’ . The increased supply is expected to come from the" pitchblende deposits In Cornwall, but the costliness cf the pro-*, cess of extraction may be deduced from the fact that only a few grains of radium are procurable from a ton of pitchblende. TO LESSEN PAIN AND LENGTHEN LIFE. “Finally, we must note one passage in the statement made to the "Daily Mail” by Sir Frederick Troves. ‘Ye shall treat well-to-do patients and charge a fee. We shall treat the poor and charge nothing.’ His Majesty s encouragement has once again given a decisive impetus to that work of social amelioration with which be has been especially identified: and Sir Ernest Cassel and Lord Iveagh have rendered a great public service. How far will it all go. this process of lessening pain and lengthening life That is one of X the questions, touching human interest to the quifk, which makes us ail discontented with the short span of our days. We long to see the end.”