Very well do I remember my first impression of M. Curie. It was in the
Rue Cuvier, at the Sorbonne Laboratories in Paris, where he was
lecturing that day in the big amphitheatre, while I waited in an
adjoining room among the air-pumps and electrical apparatus. Suddenly a
door opened and there came a burst of applause, a long clapping of
hands, and at the same moment a tall, pale man, slightly bent, walked
slowly across the room.
On this occasion I simply made an appointment to see M. Curie the next
morning at the École de Physique; but I profited by the opportunity to
ask his assistant, M. Danne, some preliminary questions about radium.
Was it true, _could_ it be true, that this strange substance gives forth
heat and light ceaselessly and is really an inexhaustible source of
energy? Of course, I had read all this, but I wanted to hear it from the
mouth of one who knew.
[Illustration: M. AND MME. CURIE USING THEIR APPARATUS FOR MEASURING THE
INTENSITY OF RADIUM.
_From a Photo._
]
"It is quite true," said M. Danne, "that pure radium gives out light and
heat without any waste or diminution that can be detected by our most
delicate instruments. That is all we can say."
"Is the light that it gives a bright light?"
"Reasonably bright. M. Curie will show you."
"Can he explain it? Can anyone explain it?"
"There are various theories, but they really explain very little."
M. Danne went on to indicate other properties of radium that are
scarcely less startling than these. Besides heat and light this strange
metal gives out constantly three kinds of invisible rays that move with
the velocity of light, or thereabouts, and, that have separate and
well-marked attributes. These rays may be helpful or harmful, they may
destroy life or stimulate it. They are capable not only of shortening
life or prolonging it, but of modifying existing forms of life--that is,
of actually creating new species. Finally, by destroying bacteria, they
may be used to cure disease, notably the dread lupus, recently conquered
by Finsen's lamps, and now apparently conquered again by a simpler
means.
I listened in amazement; it was not one discovery, but a dozen, that we
were contemplating.
"And--all this is M. Curie's discovery?"
"Radium is his discovery; that is, his and Mme. Curie's. You cannot give
one more credit than the other. They did it together."
He told me a little about Mme. Curie, who, it appears, was a Polish
student in the Latin Quarter, very poor, but possessed of rare talents.
They say that her marriage with M. Curie was just such a union, as
_must_ have produced some fine result. Without his scientific learning
and vivid imagination it is doubtful if radium would ever have been
dreamed of, and without her determination and patience against detail it
is likely the dream would never have been realized.
The next day I found M. Curie in one of the rambling sheds of the École
de Physique bending over a small porcelain dish, where a colourless
liquid was simmering, perhaps half a teacupful, and he was watching it
with concern, always fearful of some accident. He had lost nearly a
decigramme (1·5 grains troy) of radium, he said, only a few weeks before
in a curious way. He had placed some radium salts in a small tube, and
this inside another tube, in which he created a vacuum. Then he began to
heat both tubes over an electric furnace, when, suddenly, at about 2,000
degrees F., there came an explosion which shattered the tubes and
scattered their precious contents. There was absolutely no explanation
of this explosion; it was one of the tricks that radium is apt to play
on you. Here his face lightened with quite a boyish smile.
M. Curie proceeded to explain what he was doing with the little dish; he
was refining some radium dissolved in it--that is, freeing it from
contaminating barium by repeated crystallization, this being the last
and most delicate part of the process of obtaining the pure metal.
"We have our radium works outside Paris," he said, "where the crude ore
goes through its early stages of separation and where the radium is
brought to an intensity of 2,000, as we express it. After that the
process requires such care and involves so much risk of waste that we
keep the precious stuff in our own hands and treat it ourselves, my wife
and I, as I am doing now, to bring it to the higher intensities, 50,000,
200,000, 500,000, and, finally, 1,500,000. What you see here is about
100,000. It will take many more crystallizations to bring it to the
maximum."
"That is, to the state of pure radium?"
"To the state of pure chloride of radium. You know the metal exists only
as a chloride or bromide. It has never yet been isolated, although it
easily might be."
"Why has it never been isolated?"
"Because it would not be stable; it would immediately be oxidized by the
air and destroyed, as happens with sodium, whereas it remains permanent
as a bromide or chloride and suffers no change."
"Does radium change in appearance as it increases in intensity?" I
asked.
"No; it keeps the form of small white crystals, which may be crushed
into a white powder, and which look like ordinary salt. See, here are
some."
He took from the table drawer a small glass tube, not much larger than a
thick match. It was sealed at both ends and partly covered with a fold
of lead. Inside the tube I could see a white powder.
"Why is the tube wrapped with lead?" I inquired.
"For the protection of those who handle it. Lead stops the harmful rays,
that would otherwise make trouble."
"Trouble?"
"Yes; you see the radium in this tube is very active; it has an
intensity of 1,500,000, and if I were to lay it against your hand or any
part of your body, so"--he touched my hand with the bare tube--"and if I
were to leave it there for a few minutes, you would certainly hear from
it later."
"But I feel nothing."
"Of course not; neither did I feel anything when I touched some radium
here," and pulling up his sleeve he showed me a forearm scarred and
reddened from fresh-healed sores. "But you see what it did, and it was
much less intense than this specimen."
He then mentioned an experience of his friend, Professor Becquerel,
discoverer of the "Becquerel rays" of uranium, and in a way the
parent-discoverer of radium, since the latter discovery grew out of the
former. It seems that Professor Becquerel, in journeying to London,
carried in his waistcoat pocket a small tube of radium to be used in a
lecture there. Nothing happened at the time, but about a fortnight later
the professor observed that the skin under his pocket was beginning to
redden and fall away, and finally a deep and painful sore formed there
and remained for weeks before healing. A peculiar feature of these
radium sores is that they do not appear for some considerable time after
exposure to the rays.
"Then radium is an element of destruction?" I remarked.
"Undoubtedly it has a power of destruction, but that power may be
tempered or controlled, for instance, by this covering of lead. M.
Danysz, at the Pasteur Institute, will give you the pathological facts
better than I can."
This brought us back to physical facts, and I asked M. Curie if the
radium before us was at that moment giving out heat and light, for I
could perceive neither.
"Of course it is," he replied. "I will take you into a dark room
presently and let you see the light for yourself. As for the heat, a
thermometer would show that this tube of radium is 2·7 degrees F. warmer
than the surrounding air."
"Is it always that much warmer?"
"Always--so far as we know. I may put it more simply by saying that a
given quantity of radium will melt its own weight of ice every hour."
"For ever?"
He smiled. "So far as we know--for ever. Or, again, that a given
quantity of radium throws out as much heat in eighty hours as an equal
weight of coal would throw out if burned to complete combustion in one
hour."
"Suppose you had a considerable quantity of radium," I suggested, "say
twenty pounds, or a hundred pounds?"
"The law would be the same, whatever the quantity. If we had fifty kilos
(110 pounds) of radium"--he gave a little wondering cluck at the
thought--"I say _if_ we had fifty kilos of radium it would give out as
much heat _continuously_ as a stove would give out that burned ten kilos
(twenty-two pounds) of coal every twenty-four hours, and was filled up
fresh every day."
"And the radium would _never_ cease to give out this heat and would
_never_ be consumed?"
"Never is a hard word, but one of our professors has calculated that a
given quantity of radium, after throwing out heat as I have stated for a
thousand million years, would have lost only one-millionth part of its
bulk. Others think the loss might be greater, say an ounce to a ton in
ten thousand years, but in any case it is so infinitesimally small that
we have no means of measuring it, and for practical purposes it does not
exist."
[Illustration: M. AND MME. CURIE FINISHING THE PREPARATION OF SOME
RADIUM.]
After this M. Curie took me into a darkened room, where I _saw_ quite
plainly the light from the radium tube, a clear glow sufficient to read
by if the tube were held near a printed page. And, of course, this was a
very small quantity of radium, about six centigrammes (nine-tenths of a
grain troy).
"We estimate," said he, "that a decigramme of radium will illuminate a
square décimètre (fifteen square inches) of surface sufficient for
reading."
"And a kilogramme (2·2 pounds) of radium?"
"A kilogramme of radium would illuminate a room thirty feet square with
a mild radiance; and the light would be much brighter if screens of
sulphide of zinc were placed near the radium, for these are thrown by
the metal into a brilliant phosphorescence."
"Then radium may be the light of the future?"
M. Curie shook his head. "I am afraid that we should pay rather dearly
for such a light. There is first the money cost to be considered, and
then the likelihood that the people illuminated by radium would be also
stricken with paralysis, blindness, and various nervous disorders.
Possibly protective screens might be devised against these dangers, but
it is too soon to think of that. For a long time to come the radium
light will be only a laboratory wonder."
After we had been in the darkness for some time M. Curie wrapped the
radium tube in thick paper and put it in my hand.
"Now," said he, "shut your eyes and press this against your right
eyelid."
I did as he bade me, and straightway had the sensation of a strange
diffused light outside my eye. M. Curie assured me, however, that the
light was not outside but _inside_ the eye, the radium rays having the
property of making the liquids of the eyeball self-luminous, a sort of
internal phosphorescence being produced. He warned me that it would be
dangerous to leave the radium against the eyelid very long, as a serious
disturbance to the eyesight, or even blindness, might result.
Another experiment consisted in placing the radium against the bone at
the side of the forehead, and even in this position, with the eyes
closed, a light was perceptible, although fainter. Here the radium rays
had acted upon the eyeball through the bones of the head.
"It is possible," said M. Curie, "that this property of radium may be
utilized in certain diseases of the eye. Dr. Emile Javal, one of our
distinguished physicians, who is blind himself, has given this matter
particular attention, and he thinks that radium may offer a precious
means of diagnosis in cases of cataract, by showing whether the retina
is or is not intact, and whether an operation will succeed. If a person
blind from cataract can see the radium light as you have just seen it,
then the eyesight of that person may be restored by removing the
cataract. Otherwise it cannot be restored."
As we returned to the laboratory I remarked that the quantity of radium
in the various tubes I had seen was very small.
"Of course it is small," he sighed; "there is very little radium in the
world. I mean very little that has been taken from the earth and
purified."
"How much is there?"
He thought a moment. "We have about one gramme (one-third of an ounce)
in France, Germany may have one gramme, America has less than one
gramme, and the rest of the world may perhaps have half a gramme. Four
grammes in all would be an outside estimate; you could heap it all in a
tablespoon."
I suggested to M. Curie the possibility that some philanthropist might
be inspired on reading his words to help the new cause. And I remarked
that great things could doubtless be accomplished with some substantial
quantity of radium, say a pound or two.
He gave me an amused look and asked if I had any idea what a pound or
two of radium, say a kilogramme (two and one-fifth pounds), would cost.
"Why, no," said I, "no exact idea; but----"
"A kilogramme of radium would cost"--he figured rapidly on a sheet of
paper--"with the very cheapest methods that we have of purifying the
crude material it would cost about ten million francs (£400,000). Under
existing conditions radium is worth about three thousand times its
weight in pure gold."
"And yet there may be tons of it in the earth?"
M. Curie was not so sure of this. "It is doubtful," said he, "if there
is very much radium in the earth, and what there is is so thinly
scattered in the surrounding ore--mere traces of radium for tons of
worthless rock--that the cost of extracting it is almost prohibitive.
You will realize this when you visit our works at Ivry."
These works I visited the next day, and found myself outside the walls
of Paris, near the old Ivry Cemetery, where some unpretentious sheds
serve for this important business of radium extraction. One of the head
men met me and explained, step by step, how they obtain this strange and
elusive metal. First he showed me a lumpy reddish powder, sacks of it,
brought from Bohemia by the ton, and constituting the raw material from
which the radium is extracted. This powder is the refuse from uranium
mines at Jachimsthal; that is, what remains of the original uranite ore,
_pitchblende_, after the uranium has been removed. For years this refuse
was regarded as worthless, and was left to accumulate in heaps, tons of
it, quite at the disposal of whoever chose to cart it away. Now that it
is known to contain the rarest, and most precious substance in the
world, it goes without saying that the owners have begun to put a price
on it.
My informant referred with proper pride to the difficulties that had
confronted them when they started these radium works in 1901. It was a
new problem in practical chemistry to bring together infinitesimal
traces of a metal lost in tons of _débris_. It was like searching for
specks of dust hidden in a sand heap, or for drops of perfume scattered
in a river. Still, they went at it with good heart, for the end
justified the effort. If it took a ton of uranite dust to yield as much
radium as would half fill a doll's thimble, then the thing to do was to
have many tons of this dust sent on from Bohemia, and patiently to
accumulate, after months of handling, various pinches of radium, a few
centigrammes, then a few decigrammes, and finally some day--who could
tell?--they might get as much as a gramme. This was a distant prospect,
to be sure, yet with infinite pains and all the resources of chemistry
it might be attained. Well, now they had attained it, and at this time,
he said, some eight tons of uranite detritus had passed through the
caldrons and great glass jars and muddy barrels of the Ivry
establishment, had been boiled and filtered and decanted and
crystallized, with much fuming of acids and the steady glow of furnaces;
and out of it all, for the twenty-four months' effort, there had come
just about a gramme of practically pure chloride of radium--enough white
powder to fill a salt-spoon.
When next I saw M. Curie he had just returned from London, where he had
lectured before the Royal Institution. His hands were much peeled, and
very sore from too much contact with radium, and for several days he had
been unable to dress himself; but he took it good-naturedly, and
proceeded to describe some of the experiments he had made before British
scientists.
[Illustration: M. CURIE EXPLAINING THE WONDERS OF RADIUM AT THE
SORBONNE. THIS EXPERIMENT WITH THE RADIUM LIGHT IS DESCRIBED IN THE
ARTICLE.]
In order to demonstrate that radium throws off heat continually he took
two glass vessels, one containing a thermometer and a tube of radium,
the other containing a thermometer and no radium. Both vessels were
closed with cotton, and it was presently seen that the thermometer in
the vessel containing the radium registered constantly 5·4 degrees F.
higher than the thermometer which was not so influenced.
The most striking experiment presented by M. Curie in his London
lecture was one devised by him to prove the existence of radium
emanations, a kind of gaseous product (quite different from the rays)
which this extraordinary metal seems to throw off constantly as it
throws off heat and light. These emanations may be regarded as an
invisible vapour of radium, like water vapour, only infinitely more
subtle, which settles upon all objects that it approaches and confers
upon them, for a time at least, the mysterious properties of radium
itself. Thus the yellow powder sulphide of zinc bursts into a brilliant
glow under the stimulus of radium emanations, and to make it clear that
this effect is due to the emanations and not to the rays M. Curie
constructed an apparatus in which a glass tube, R, containing a solution
of radium is connected with two glass bulbs, A and B, containing
sulphide of zinc.
The experiment is begun by exhausting the air from the two bulbs A and
B, by means of air-pump connections through the tube E. The air is not
exhausted, however, from the tube R, over which the stop-cock F is
closed, and within which the emanations have been allowed to accumulate.
The room is now darkened, and it is seen that so long as the stop-cock F
remains closed there is no glow in the bulbs A and B, but as soon as the
stop-cock F is opened both bulbs shine brilliantly, so that the light is
plainly visible at a distance of several hundred yards. Now, obviously,
if this effect were due to the radium rays, it would be produced whether
the stop-cock F were open or closed, since the radium rays pass freely
through glass and need not follow the tube S in order to reach the bulbs
A and B. It is therefore clear that the sudden light in the bulbs is due
to the passage of _something_ out of the tube R, and through the tube S,
that _something_ being kept back by the glass of the bulb R until the
stop-cock F is opened. So we conclude that the emanations of radium
_cannot_ pass through glass, and are a manifestation quite distinct from
the rays of radium, which _can_ pass through but do not influence the
sulphide of zinc.
[Illustration]
This point having been established, M. Curie proceeded to the most
sensational part of his demonstration, by closing the stop-cock F and
then placing the lower bulb B, still radiant, in a vessel G containing
liquid air, the result being that the light in the bulb B gradually grew
stronger while the light in the bulb A diminished, until, presently,
_all_ the light seemed concentrated in B and gone from A, the conclusion
being that the intense cold of liquid air had produced some change in
the emanations, had possibly reduced them from a gas to a liquid, thus
withdrawing them from A to B and checking the one glow while increasing
the other.
In talking with Sir William Crookes, M. Curie was interested to learn
that the English scientist had just devised a curious little instrument
which he has named the spinthariscope, and which allows one to actually
_see_ the emanations from radium and to realize as never before the
extraordinary atomic disintegration that is going on ceaselessly in this
strange metal. The spinthariscope is a small microscope that allows one
to look at a tiny fragment of radium, about one-twentieth of a
milligramme, supported on a little wire over a screen spread with
sulphide of zinc.
The experiment must be made in a darkened room after the eye has
gradually acquired its greatest sensitiveness to light. To the eye thus
sensitive and looking intently through the lenses the screen appears
like a heaven of flashing meteors, among which stars shine forth
suddenly and die away. Near the central radium speck the fire shower is
most brilliant, while towards the rim of the circle it grows fainter.
And this goes on continuously as the metal throws off its emanations;
these myriad bursting blazing stars _are_ the emanations--at least, we
may assume it--and become visible as the scattered radium dust or radium
vapour impinges speck by speck upon the screen, which, for each tiny
fragment, flashes back a responsive phosphorescence. M. Curie spoke of
this vision, that was really contained within the area of a two-cent
piece, as one of the most beautiful and impressive he had ever
witnessed; it was as if he had been allowed to assist at the birth of a
universe or at the death of a molecule.
Dwelling upon the extreme attenuation of these radium emanations, M.
Curie mentioned a recent experiment, in which he had used a platinum box
pierced by two holes so extremely small that the box would retain a
vacuum, yet not small enough to resist the passage of radium emanations.
In view of the extreme rarity and costliness of radium, it is evident
that its emanations may be put to many important uses in and out of the
laboratory, since they bestow upon indifferent objects--a plate, a piece
of iron, an old shoe, anything--the very properties of radium itself.
Thus a scientist or a doctor unable to procure the metal radium
may easily experiment with a bit of wood or glass rendered
radio-active--that is, charged by radium emanations, and capable of
replacing the original metal as long as the charge keeps its potency.
This period has been determined by the Curies after observations
extending over weeks and months, and applied to all sorts of substances,
copper, aluminium, lead, rubber, wax, celluloid, paraffin, no fewer than
fifty in all, the resulting conclusions being formulated in a precise
law as follows:--
(1) All substances may be rendered radio-active through the
influence of radium emanations.
(2) Substances thus influenced retain their induced radio-activity
very much longer when guarded in a small enclosure through which
the emanations cannot pass (say a sealed glass tube) than when not
so guarded. In the former case their radio-activity diminishes
one-half every four days. In the latter case it diminishes
one-half every twenty-eight minutes.
I must pass rapidly over various other wonders of radium that M. Curie
laid before me. New matter is accumulating every week as the outcome of
new investigations. Even in the chemistry of radium, which is
practically an unexplored field, owing to the scarcity and costliness of
the metal, there are various facts to be noted, as these: that radium
changes the colour of phosphorus from yellow to red; that radium rays
increase the production of ozone in certain cases; that a small quantity
of radium dissolved in water throws off hydrogen constantly by causing a
disintegration of the water, the oxygen released being absorbed in some
unknown molecular combination. Also that a solution of radium gives a
violet or brownish tint to a glass vessel containing it, this tint being
permanent, unless the glass be heated red hot. Here, by the way, is an
application of importance in the arts, for radium may thus be used to
modify the colours of glass and crystals, possibly of gems. It is
furthermore established that radium offers a ready means of
distinguishing real from imitation diamonds, since it causes the real
stones to burst into a brilliant phosphorescence when brought near them
in a darkened room, while it has scarcely any such effect upon false
stones. M. Curie made this experiment recently at a reception in Lille,
to the great delight of the guests.
Coming now to what may be the most important properties of radium--that
is, those which influence animal life--we may follow M. Curie's advice
and visit the Pasteur Institute, where for some months now a remarkable
series of radium tests has been in progress.
M. Danysz is convinced that all animals, probably all forms of life,
would succumb to the destructive force of radium if employed in
sufficient quantities.
"I have no doubt," said he, "that a kilogramme of radium would be
sufficient to destroy the population of Paris, granting that they came
within its influence. Men and women would be killed just as easily as
mice. They would feel nothing during their exposure to the radium, nor
realize that they were in any danger. And weeks would pass after their
exposure before anything would happen. Then gradually the skin would
begin to peel off and their bodies would become one great sore. Then
they would become blind. Then they would die from paralysis and
congestion of the spinal cord."
Despite this rather gloomy prospect, certain experiments at the Pasteur
Institute may encourage us to believe that, for all its menace of
destruction, radium is destined to bring substantial benefits to
suffering humankind. The substance of these favourable experiments is
that, while animal life may undoubtedly suffer great harm from radium
when used in excess or wrongly used (the same is true of strychnine), it
may also derive immense good from radium when used within proper bounds,
these to be set when we have gained a fuller knowledge of the subject.
Meantime it is worthy of note that some of M. Danysz's animals, when
exposed to the radium for a short time, or to radium of lower intensity,
or to radium at a greater distance, have not perished, but have seemed
to thrive under the treatment.
But the most startling experiment performed thus far at the Pasteur
Institute is one undertaken by M. Danysz, February 3rd, 1903, when he
placed three or four dozen little worms that live in flour, the larvæ
_Ephestia kuehniella_, in a glass flask, where they were exposed for a
few hours to the rays of radium. He placed a like number of larvæ in a
control flask where there was no radium, and he left enough flour in
each flask for the larvæ to live upon. After several weeks it was found
that most of the larvæ in the radium flask had been killed, but that a
few of them had escaped the destructive action of the rays by crawling
away to distant corners of the flask, where they were still living. But
_they were living_ _as larvæ, not as moths_, whereas in the natural
course they should have become moths long before, as was seen by the
control flask, where the larvæ had all changed into moths, and these had
hatched their eggs into other larvæ, and these had produced other moths.
All of which made it clear that the radium rays had arrested the
development of these little worms.
[Illustration: M. CURIE TESTING DIAMONDS AT A RECEPTION AT LILLE.]
More weeks passed and still three or four of the larvæ lived, and four
full months after the original exposure I saw a larva alive and
wriggling while its contemporary larvæ in the other jar had long since
passed away as aged moths, leaving generations of moths' eggs and larvæ
to witness this miracle, for here was a larva, venerable among his kind,
a patriarch _Ephestia kuehniella_, that had actually lived through
_three times the span of life accorded to his fellows_, and that still
showed no sign of changing into a moth. It was very much as if a young
man of twenty-one should keep the appearance of twenty-one for two
hundred and fifty years!
Not less remarkable than these are some recent experiments made by M.
Bohn at the biological laboratories of the Sorbonne, his conclusions
being that radium may so far modify various lower forms of life as to
actually produce "monsters," abnormal deviations from the original type
of the species. Thus tadpole monsters have been formed from tadpoles
exposed four days after birth to radium rays. Some of these monsters
lived for twenty-three days, and would doubtless have lived longer had
they been exposed to the rays for a shorter time. No changes occur in
the tadpoles treated except at the transition points of growth, as on
the eighth day, when the breathing tentacles are covered by gills in the
normal tadpole, but are not so covered in the monsters formed after
radium treatment. These monsters take on a new form, with an increasing
atrophy of the tail and a curious wrinkling of the tissues at the back
of the head; in fact, they may be said to develop a new breathing
apparatus, quite different from that of ordinary tadpoles.
M. Bohn has obtained similar results with eggs of the toad and eggs of
the sea-urchin, monsters resulting in both cases and continuing to live
for a number of days or weeks after exposure to the radium. Furthermore,
he has been able to accomplish with radium what Professor Loeb did with
saline solutions--that is, to cause the growth of unfecundated eggs of
the sea-urchin, and to advance these through several stages of their
development. In other words, he has used radium _to create life_ where
there would have been no life but for this strange stimulation.
M. Bohn assured me of his conviction that we may in the future be able
to produce new species of insects, moths, butterflies, perhaps birds and
fishes, by simply treating the eggs with radium rays, the result being
that interesting changes will be effected in the colouring and
adornment. He also believes that, with greater quantities of radium at
our disposal and a fuller understanding of its properties, it may be
possible to produce new species among larger creatures, mice, rabbits,
guinea-pigs, etc. It is merely a question of degree, for if new types
can be produced in one species why may they not be produced in another?
It remains to mention certain important services that radium may render
in the cure of bodily ills, notably of lupus and other skin diseases.
Here is a great new field full of promise, yet one that must be
considered with guarded affirmation, lest false hopes be aroused. It is
too soon as yet to say more than this, that distinguished doctors speak
with confidence of excellent results that may be looked for from the
radium treatment. Dr. Danlos, for instance, has used the radium rays on
lupus patients at the St. Louis Hospital in Paris for over a year, and
in several cases has accomplished apparent cures. The radium used is
enclosed between two small discs of copper and aluminium, the whole
being about the size of a silver dollar. The aluminium disc, which is
very thin, is pressed against the affected part and left there for
fifteen minutes; that is all there is in the treatment, except
cleansing, bandaging, etc. Day after day, for weeks or months, this
contact with the disc is continued, and after a period of irritation the
sores heal, leaving healthy white scars. Some patients thus treated have
gone for months without a relapse, but it is too soon to declare the
cures absolute. They _look like_ absolute cures, that is all Dr. Danlos
will say, and if time proves that they _are_ absolute cures, then radium
will do for lupus patients all that Finsen's lamps do, and will do it
more quickly, more simply, and with no cumbersome and costly apparatus.
It may be objected that radium also is costly, but the answer is that
radium will probably become cheaper as the supply increases and as the
processes of extracting it are perfected. Furthermore, the effects of
radium may be obtained, as already stated, by the use of indifferent
bodies rendered radio-active, so that lupus patients may be treated with
a piece of wood or a piece of glass possessed for the moment of the
virtues of radium. And certain kinds of cancer may be similarly treated;
indeed, a London physician has already reported a case of cancer cured
by radium.
These are possibilities, _not_ certainties, and there are others. It
appears that radium has a bactericidal action in certain cases, and it
would therefore seem reasonable that air rendered radio-active may
benefit sufferers from lung troubles if breathed into the lungs, or that
water rendered radio-active may benefit sufferers from stomach troubles
if taken into the stomach. It goes without saying that in all these
cases the use of radium must be attended with extreme precautions, so
that harmful effects may be avoided.
Just as I was leaving Paris I learned of an interesting and significant
new fact about radium, one that greatly impressed M. Curie--namely, that
the air from deep borings in the earth is found to be radio-active, and
that the waters from mineral springs are radio-active. This would seem
to indicate the presence of radium in the earth in considerable
quantities, and that would mean more abundant and cheaper radium in the
not distant future. One of the things to be hoped for now is the
discovery of a single simple reaction by which radium may be easily
separated from the dross that contains it, and any day the chemists may
put their hands on such a reaction.
And then--well, it is best to avoid sweeping statements, but there is
certainly reason to believe that we are entering upon a domain of new,
strange knowledge and drawing near to some of Nature's most hallowed
secrets.
_Trousers in Sculpture._