Physician Raps "Radium Hysteria"

1914

Says Element Alone Will Not Cure Cancer

Washington, Jan. 24. — "The radium hysteria is a disease that is likely to set back the proper treatment of cancer; and the inevitable failure of radium, as at present exploited as a cure, will add acute mental suffering to the physical tortures resulting from the disease."

This, was the declaration of Dr. Francis D. Donoghue, of Massachusetts, in a brief filed with the house committee on mines and mining endorsing Secretary of the Interior Lane's proposal to withdraw the radium bearing lands of the west from public entry.

Dr. Donoghue said further:

"Radium is not a cure and probably never will be a cure alone for cancer. Rather than develop the unknown and uncertain value of radium it would be better to establish institutes for the treatment of cancer by the combined methods of known values; first, thermotherapy, second, surgery, third, ray treatment by radium and X-ray; fourth, by the use of various forms of radio-energy."

The committee had under consideration a statement of Joseph M. Flannery, of Pittsburgh, owner of Colorado lands containing radium-bearing ores and opponent of Lane's plan, to the effect that the conservation policy not only would retard the proper development of the cancer cure, but would postpone cheaper radium.

Flannery told the committee that radium has a by-product, unnamed and undeveloped, which will revolutionize the yield of the soil and greatly lower the high cost of living. He asserts that the mixing of this by-product with fertilizer improves both the size and the quality of growing plants.

A cabbage, according to the witness, will improve 300 per cent in quality and size if grown with this fertilizer. Corn has been improved in experimental work 100 per cent; wheat, 65 per cent, beans, 33 per cent, and other vegetables have shown gratifying results, according to Flannery.

Italian Doctor Said to Have Remedy for Cancer

1912

HE CURES CANCER

Italian Doctor Said to Have Remedy For Malignant Disease, Fifteen Patients Healed

By the United Press Associations.

Chicago, Ill., Dec. 17.—After working day and night under the shadow of Hull house, in the heart of Chicago's Italian quarter, Dr. Joseph D. Stevano, an Italian, says he has perfected a cure for malignant cancer.

The cure is vouched for by Dr. A. A. Whamond, president of the Robert Burns hospital. Dr. Whamond said today that in his hospital and in homes fifteen persons who have been declared incurable and too far advanced for operation had been cured. The cancer wounds have healed, he says, and every sympton of the disease has disappeared.

—The Daily Commonwealth, Fond Du Lac, Wisconsin, December 17, 1912, page 1.

London Man Thinks Cancer Cure is Near

1912

London, July 6. — "I have not discovered a cure for cancer, but I think I have got very near it," was the announcement made by Dr. F. W. Forbes Ross, whose pain killing discovery was made public recently.

"I am convinced that the cure, when found, will be very simple. As far as my investigation has gone I have come to the conclusion that the cause of cancer has no connection with meat or vegetable diet; neither is it an irritation of parts of a back infection.

"My theory is that cancer cells are really 'Peter Pans' that will not grow old. If we could make them grow old we could cure the disease, because we should stop the multiplication of cells and they would absorbed.

"What I claim to have discovered is that cancer is nothing more or less than an exhaustion of natural quality in a body, possessed by epithelial cells, consequent upon diminution in the body of potassium salts."

—Oakland Tribune, Oakland, California, July 7, 1912, page 2.