Abstract
TELEBADIUM therapy progresses in Great Britain, and more than one big unit is now established, for, apart from those centralized under the control of the Radium Beam Therapy Research, there is a 4 gm. unit at Westminster Hospital's Radium Annexe, where physicists and engineers have combined in devising an efficient form of distant electrical control. The radium container is suspended from a rotating beam bolted to a steel girder. This container weighs about 70 lb., and the transfer of the radium in it after application to the patients, to a massive safe for purposes of custody, is carried out electrically. There is no actual handling of the radium by any of the staff, the operator being 14 ft. from the patient's couch. Another interesting feature of the container used is that it carries a collar of platinum in order to reduce scattering of emergent rays to a minimum. These technical developments in the construction of big units of radium are very welcome, because the ordinary methods of protection for the personnel which are quite efficacious in the case of X-rays are inapplicable with penetrating gamma radiation.
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Advances in Radium Therapy Technique. Nature 138, 611 (1936). https://doi.org/10.1038/138611a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/138611a0