Twelve decades of using radium in the treatment of deeper localised cancers

Abstract

The end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century marked a period of fundamental discoveries in the physics of ionising radiation (X radiation and radioactivity). Isolating radium, a highly radioactive element, immediately opened the way to its application for medical therapeutic purposes. It turned out that the sources of ionising radiation are very effective for changes localised on the skin and at small depths under the skin but not for lesions at greater depths. Interestingly, the inventor of the modern telephone, Alexander Graham Bell, was the first to come up with the idea of placing radium sources in glass tubes and placing them directly in the pathologically changed tissues of the patients to be treated (at greater depths). That period marked the beginning of a highly successful era in radium therapy, involving the use of capsules and needles filled with radium, which eventually led to the development of modern brachytherapy. Unfortunately, for several decades people believed in the universally therapeutic properties of radium, so that (fortunately in smaller quantities) it was added to water, food, hygiene products, etc.