Since the early publications of Pasteau1 and co-workers highly commending the use of radium for prostatic cancer, many eminent urologists—Barringer and Keyes, Marion, Young and others—have reported encouraging and hopeful results in the treatment with radium of both prostatic and vesical cancer.
The methods of use for cancer here, and of other parts of the body, have been practiced sufficiently long to establish certain principles. In the first place, it is important to control the dose of radiation by proper screening, accurate placement and limitation of exposure, so that radium burns may not be produced. In the second place, close approximation of the radium element to the area for radiation gives far better results than radiation at a distance, even when enormous doses are thus used.
METHODS OF TREATMENT
Various methods have been adopted by the different advocates of radium. The simplest is the ordinary rubber catheter as used