It takes about 1,700 years for half the atoms in a given mass of radium to explode in this way and 35,000 before radium is changed to lead—the dead end product. Hence the scattering of even minute amounts of radium over a wide area is something that worries British managers of hospitals.
Radium also gives off a gas called radon. This is just as effective as radium itself. Like radium, it sends out gamma rays. For this reason most hospitals in this country carefully collect radon, seal it in little tubes and use these when they can, which is very often. Unlike radium itself this radon has a short life. Half of the atoms of radon are dead at the end of three da nineteen hours and the rest in a few days more.
Radon is not so extensively used in England as in the United States, chiefly because the supply of radium is rather widely distributed. The English want to use more radon, It makes possible the continuous treatment of a patient even though the bombs are raining down, for the tube of radon and the patient can be transferred to safety. No such continuity of treatment is jo if radium itself is used.
Because the loss of radium means death to some victims of cancer who might be saved by its gamma rays, Dr. Cuthbert Wallace has been cabling to this country for aid in establishing a subterranean room where radon can be collected, The British War Relief Society here' has responded by cabling $25,000. More money is needed. The underground radium "shelter" is to be established in a region which is in less danger from aerial attack than densely. populated London. Prof. Sidney Russ, chief of the department of biophysics of Middlesex Hospital Medical: School, has charge of the work. een According to Mr. Bernard Docker, chairman of the British Hospitals Association, the demand for radium treatment has increased in Great Britain because of the bombings. It is a fair guess that this is so because X-ray apparatus which treatment of cancer has been destroyed. Mr. Docker presents a distressing picture of a limited supply of radon, long lists of patients who should have treatment and cannot get it as often as they should, and a need for radon "quite as urgent as for drugs and dressings."
According to another report, radium treatment by means of irradiating packs have been virtually suspended in London and other cities. Whether the packs are to be used in underground treatment rooms we Move not heard. Probably British plans call Xor some such procedure. If so, more money vill be needed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.