By kind permission of J. Macdonald Brown, Esq., M.D., F.R.C.S., 

 F.R.S.E., the following extracts from his Lecture on " Radium and its 

 Therapeusis " are reprinted from the Pharmaceutical Journal and Pharmacist 

 of March 18, 1916 : 



" ' The changes which take place in radium itself during some thousand years of 

 incessant warfare and bombardment are of necessity almost impossible to estimate, but 

 we do know that it changes into some eight intermediate bodies (Radium, A, B, C, D, 

 E, F, G), most of which have only a very short duration of life, and each of which is formed 

 from the preceding one with an outburst of explosive energy and changes into the next 

 with another outburst of energy.' (Soddy). Its energy being well over a million times 

 that furnished by the combustion of coal. And just as radium is the parent of the emana- 

 tion and the subsequent forms, so uranium is the parent of radium, with probably the 

 intermediate ionium between. 



" Beyond the emanation stage we have noted subsequent transformations radium, 

 A, B, etc. until we eventually arrive at RF, which is the element polonium, and RG, 

 which is the metal lead. 



" The accompanying diagram, taken from Professor Soddy's work, shows, ' so far 

 as it is at present known, the complete disintegration series of uranium ' 



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" It will be noticed in the above diagram that wherever the alpha particles viz., the 

 atoms of helium are given off, the succeeding body loses four points in its atomic weight. 



" Thus is shown the transmutation of the elements. What further transformations 

 take place, as they probably do beyond lead, of these we are as yet ignorant. 



" As Sir Robert Ball says, ' the discovery of radium marks an epoch in the history 

 of our knowledge of nature.' 



" In the long millions of years which succeeded the Nebular stage in the formation 

 of our world during these aeons of time titanic forces were at work, and gigantic trans- 

 formations of matter must have taken place. 



" It is quite possible to conceive that in those ancient epochs our globe may have been 

 a smelted mass of some protean mineral, from whose evolutions and transformations 

 during immense periods of time our elements as we now know them were gradually 

 segregated and their characteristics specialised. 



" We have seen that the older teaching of chemistry received a rude shock as regards 

 its atomic theory by the advent of radium. Again, its fundamental dogma as to the 

 question of unchangeable elements has been shaken, if not shattered, by the even small 

 ray of light which has been shed upon the subject by radium and its transformations. 



" In this connection one might even venture to enter upon almost transcendental 

 speculation as to whether indeed any so-called element is ever an absolutely stable and 

 unchanging form of matter, and not merely a stage in matter whose transformations 

 take thousands or millions of years to be carried out. 



" The fact is that the greatest scientists and philosophers withal are but as little 

 children struggling and striving for the light, and to whom a few beams have been 

 vouchsafed beams which only serve to show how colossal our ignorance is of the past 

 no less than the future history of the development of our planet. 



" What use may be made in the future of the vast stores of imprisoned energy possessed 

 by our globe, who can foretell ? Probably long before the coal measures of the world 

 are exhausted these stores may be being utilised for the production of heat, applied 

 mechanics, etc., etc." 



