THE USE OF RADIUM IN MEDICINE ' 



By Antoine Btct,tvLK 

 Member of the Acad^mie de M6dicine 



Radium kills living tissue. Henri Becquerel accidentally discov- 

 ered this unsuspected property. As the consequence of carrying a 

 piece of radium in one of his pockets there developed on his chest 

 a burn very slow in healing. This chance observation was verified 

 by Pierre Curie. The latter deliberately placed a piece of radium 

 on his arm. After allowing it to remain there 10 hours there was 

 produced a painful sore which required more than four months to 

 heal. 



Pierre and Madame Curie, hoping that this as yet ill-directed 

 force might become one of benefit, transmitted a little of the precious 

 substance to a physician of the St. Louis Hospital. The latter care- 

 fully applied it to the killing of diseased growths of the skin. 

 Other physicians in France, regulating and improving the technique, 

 extended these earlier attempts to severer lesions. There thus was 

 originated in France a new form of medical treatment. It was soon 

 adopted and investigated in all civilized countries and increased in 

 importance. Subsequently the curative properties of certain mineral 

 waters and various mineral muds was traced to the radioactive prop- 

 erties belonging to them. 



This new method of treatment was at first called radiumtherapy. 

 Later, after other radioactive substances had been discovered, several 

 of which proved to be of similar value, it received the designation 

 of Curie-therapy — very appropriately, since on the other side of the 

 Rhine a treatment making the use of X rays, discovered by the 

 physicist Rontgen, had been called Rontgen-therapy. 



Curie therapy may make use of the more general action of radio- 

 active substances introduced in various ways in extreme dilution 

 into the blood stream, but it much oftener uses the more specific 

 local action resulting from the radiations from substances of which 

 radium remains the most perfect type. This local action is found 



1 Address delivered at the Sorbonne, Dec. 26, 1923, on the occasion of the twenty-flftli 

 anniversary of the discovery of radium. Translated by permission from Revue Scien- 

 tiflque, Feb. 9, 1924. 



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