Word: betatrons
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...team of six doctors, nurses, and technicians hover at chamber-side, the radiologist maneuvers a betatron into position. After slamming shut a hatch at the end of the chamber, technicians force oxygen in. After 15 minutes under full pressure, during which the patient's body is closely watched by means of closed-circuit television, the radiologist turns on the betatron, shoots radiation at the tumor. Following treatment, the patient is decompressed in deep-sea-diver fashion and taken to the recovery room...
...months since the 26-million volt betatron was installed at the University of Illinois' College of Medicine in Chicago (TIME, Sept. 5, 1949), researchers have found it a valuable and promising weapon against some kinds of cancer. Twenty-three patients have been given a full course of treatments. Of these, reports the Illinois Division of the American Cancer Society, "a few are without evidence of the disease so far as can be ascertained...
...only patients accepted for the betatron were those with cancers so far advanced that no other treatment offered any hope. Yet only four of the betatron patients are known to have died of cancer; eight have died from other causes not directly related to cancer. Doctors feel that the betatron has shown remarkable promise in brain cancer; of six cases treated, only one has died. More apparent is the effect of the betatron's massive doses of high-voltage X rays on a less common malignancy called Pancoast's tumor. This type of cancer eats away the ribs...
...Soon to Say Cured. The betatron's first patient, Fordyce Hotchkiss (TIME, Dec. 19, 1949), died last month of a coronary thrombosis. The cancer in his throat appeared to have healed completely. However, Hotchkiss' cancer had started to spread before he began the treatments, and the areas affected later could not be treated by the betatron because of the danger of overdosing his neck. Nevertheless, Hotchkiss got back his appetite, ate three full meals a day until the secondary cancers appeared, and dressed himself every day until his death...
Electrons in the Raw. Meanwhile, the doctors are trying something new with the betatron. Previously they used it in a roundabout way-shooting a stream of electrons against a platinum target, which produced X rays, and then aiming the X rays into the patient's cancer. The new technique is to use the electrons in the raw. The advantage: whereas an X-ray beam keeps going after it has passed through cancerous tissue, and may cause "exit burns" where it leaves the body, the electron beam can be focused to hit the cancer site and then dissipate itself...