MIRACLES OF SCIENCE 



hand, if given in the right quantities it seems to have 

 curative properties. Its effects on the cells of super- 

 ficial cancers and of lupus are similar to those of 

 radium. No harmful effects have been discovered 

 from its administration in moderate doses. 



But the most curious fact connected with the giving 

 of thorium X in the experiments on dogs was that 

 after twenty-four hours the greater part of the drug 

 administered could be recovered from the red marrow 

 of the dog's bones. It is believed that one function 

 of the marrow is to manufacture the all-essential red 

 blood corpuscles; and some of the experimenters were 

 soon convinced that thorium X has unique power to 

 stimulate this function. Then Professor A. Bickel, 

 of the University of Berlin, used thorium X in the 

 treatment of cases of pernicious anaemia, a disease 

 in which, as is well known, the patient suffers from a 

 paucity of red blood corpuscles. The results of this 

 treatment have proved almost startling. In the case 

 of a patient who received small doses of thorium X 

 by the mouth three times a day, the number of red 

 blood corpuscles in a given quantity of blood in- 

 creased in six weeks from 960,000 to 4,600,000. In 

 a case reported by another observer there was an in- 

 crease from 340,000 to 860,000 red cells in twenty- 

 four hours. 



In the fall of 1912, Dr. Bickel was summoned to 

 America to treat a case of pernicious anaemia in 

 Greenwich, Connecticut. In this case there was a 

 complication of heart and kidney diseases that pre- 

 vented a favorable result. But Dr. Park secured 

 from Dr. Bickel a quantity of the drug to use in an 



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