Abstract
THE Ministry of Health has issued an important publication on cancer treatment entitled "Cancer: Memorandum on Provision of Radio-Therapeutic Departments in General Hospitals", by Lieut.-Colonel Smallman (Reps, on Pub. Health and Med. Subjects, No. 79. London: H.M. Stationery Office.9d. net). A principal reason for the preparation of this memorandum is the growing use of radium and X-rays in the treatment of cancer, in substitution for, or in cquipped and staffedonjunction with, surgery. As a result, hospitals in which cancer patients are treated need to be specially e for this part of their work. The memorandum emphasizes the importance of team work, and that the radio-therapeutic department should be in close touch not only with the surgical department, but also with other departments (gynaecological, pathological, etc.) provided by the hospital of which it should form an integral part. It concludes that a general hospital should contain some three hundred beds if it is to make reasonably full use of radiation treatment facilities. Plans are given for the lay-out of a radio-therapeutic department, the various features of which are explained in the text. The memorandum discusses how those hospitals which cannot provide full cancer treatment facilities can be enabled to make use of other hospitals in which full facilities exist. Appendixes contain the recommendations of the British X-Ray and Radium Protection Committee and of the Radium Commission on the care and custody of radium.
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Radio-Therapeutic Treatment of Cancer. Nature 140, 356 (1937). https://doi.org/10.1038/140356b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/140356b0