Search

Radium being comparatively a new agent, it is premature to take the position that it has yet reached its maturity or possibilities. As all innovations do, it is now running the critical gamut. In one camp it is unconditionally condemned, while in the other it is equally acclaimed. Where such contention exists the truth is found in the midway position.Though radium is yet in its developmental period, and though already we have abandoned some of our earlier fondest hopes, still, in the past five years, there have been deduced certain well established clinical facts.Menstruation is a complex process influenced by innumerable factors, ranging from undeveloped organs, defective endocrines and new growths down to constitutional dyscrasias. In many instances its derangement is a local expression of a constitutional condition; therefore it is most difficult correctly to divide cases of uterine bleeding, of these types, into segregated pathologic groups. In

Although it has been known for centuries that cancer is peculiarly susceptible to heat, its application was not established on an intelligent basis until Percy, in 1912, experimentally proved that cancer cells would be destroyed when exposed to a temperature of 113 F. for twenty minutes, and, further, that the normal tissue would live in a temperature as high as 131.9 F.With this as a fundamental principle, he worked out a scheme by which heat could be applied to cervical carcinoma on a far more elaborate scale than had ever heretofore been possible. Up to this time we had been trying to realize the same brilliant results accomplished by Byrne of Brooklyn, but he left no definite technical plan to follow. Each worker groped along independent lines. There was no definite knowledge of the physical effect of heat on cancer cells, and consequently individual efforts ended in gross disappointment.