Radium effects2/19/2023 ![]() ![]() ![]() Their results partially corroborated Wassermann's hypothesis concerning the increase in the size of the growth, which he had suggested was due to an ameboid outwandering of the cells and not to any true mitotic division. The alteration in the power of these cells to divide, as shown by the decrease in the number of mitotic figures, was regarded by them, however, as evidence of a profound effect exercised by the radium rays upon the growth of tumors. After the exposure, plasma cultures were made of the tissue and twenty-four hours later there was observed an extrusion of spindle cells which had been uninfluenced in their ameboid activity by the beta or gamma rays. In this same year, however, Price Jones and Mottram (4) undertook to expose pieces of transplantable mouse and rat carcinomata to the action of radium rays. No observations were made, however, on the growing cells themselves, a circumstance which rendered his deductions of less value than they might otherwise have been. He formulated from his results the hypothesis, that following radium therapy there results a nuclear but not a cellular death. He, however, exposed pieces of tumor tissue suspended in Ringer's solution to the radium rays and inoculated these fragments into animals, but did not try to grow the cells outside of the body. Several years later, Wassermann (3) published the results of his work along the same line. As early as 1911, however, Wedd and Russ (2) reported a series of experiments in which a transplantable tumor was removed from the mouse in which it had grown, kept moist between mica sheets during exposure to radium, and then inoculated into mice it was found that no growth resulted from the grafts, provided they had been radiumized for a sufficient length of time. In all the work which has appeared since radium has been obtained in sufficient quantities to allow of its general use, practically no observations have been made previous to 1914 upon the action of radium rays on living mammalian tissue grown outside the host. The employment of in vitro cultures of cells growing in plasma offers a convenient method for observing growing tissue, and this, therefore, was chosen as the most suitable means for studying the changes produced by radium upon the individual cells. It was in order to clear up this phase of the question, therefore, that the following work was undertaken. Yet it is here that the action of the radium rays is exerted for good or ill, and it is essential to know just what takes place within the confines of the cell exposed to the influence of this element. Little attention has been paid in the work already done, however, to the effect of radium upon the isolated cells of mammalian tissue. The outcome of these experiments has been published in full elsewhere (1). Two years ago investigations were begun along this line in the Crocker Fund laboratory, using transplantable animal tumors, in which the results can be controlled with a far greater degree of accuracy than is possible in the human subject. Each investigator has developed a different method of applying and filtering rays, so that much confusion has arisen in regard to the most satisfactory method of applying these rays and the manner of employing them in order to obtain the best results. The observations along this line have been chiefly clinical, made, that is, upon tumors in man, where it was impossible to control the results with any degree of accuracy. During the last few years much has been written both for and against the usefulness of radium as a therapeutic agent in the treatment of malignant growths. ![]()
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