Atlanta Georgian. [volume] (Atlanta, Ga.) 1912-1939, 1914-02-08
Surgeon Tells How He Scorned
Present From Fitted French
woman When 1t Was New.
WANTED IT FOR LIGHTING
Now Would Not Accept Any Sum
for Tube or for Letter From
Discoverer.

NEW YORK, Feb. THE tube
containing from ten to fifteen grains
of radium. which has been in use Tor
the past three weeks in the treatment
of cancer cases in the office of DR..
charles Russell Hancock, in West
Ftfty-seCond street, was a gift, it was
earned yesterday, from Nine. Cucie
To its present owner, DR. G. H. carp
Thomas of Bloomfield, n. j.
The gift was made in 1900. before
the real value of radium in surgery
vas known and when it was chiefly
renowned for other qualities. Dr.
carp Thomas did not take the gift Sc
rfousIy at first, as he had to pay some
email amount of cash for labor and
material" used in preparing the ra-
dunn tubes, and he acknowledged il
with an indignant letter to Nine. Gu
RE protesting against il as a fake"
When the tube was made up, the
main purpose was to make the radium
as luminous as possible. Last night
in a dark room DIR. Earp-Thomas tube
g!owed brilliantly. He said that he
had seen samples of radium bromide
at Harvard University which had only
small fraction of the luminosity that
his tube had.
Scorned Gift as Fake"
While he scorned the gift as =
fake" when it came to him, because
he had expected its quality of luml-
mostly 10 be quite different from what
1t turned out to be, DIR. carp Thomas
said Yesterday he would not now
par. with his radium for any sum of
money and that he would always
h &c lot 10 40
Curie explaining that the article was
not a fraud and that the small guam
tty sent was all that could be fur
nished as it was very hard to make
ana could not be obtained in larger
quantities.
In the thirteen years since he OBJ
tanned his radium DR.. carp Thoma s
has used ii in meteorological expert
ments. testing its effects on the little
forms II life to be seen only under the
microscope. He said there was a field
for the development of radium's use
in the bacCilli as important as its use
fUlnesS among humans, md that he
was contented tocontinue his expert
ments in his own chosen field of ba2
reri5ogy, leaving the medical field to
others.
My father moved from England
he said and set up in New Zealand
an experimental laboratory for his
own pleasure My brother Henry was
in Paris u complete his studies as a
dental surgeon, when he wrote home
to us about Nine Curie and her eX
pertinent with radium. What he
emphasized to us was that it was
luminous
Wanted 1t for Light.
The thought occurred to me that
It would be a fine thing to obtain a
lot of this stuff and light our labora
tory with it, | wanted to see what it
would do as an illuminant. So we
took up a correspondence with Nine.
turie. She replied with a long letter
in French which we could not make
out very we'll But we gathered that
a tube Of radium would be sent to us
later and that it would be gift iE
recognition of the fact that the Aus
raian Government had helped her
with donations of pitChblende. At the
same time she said there would be
charge for time in extracting this
particular tube of radium from the
pitchblende.
"Angry-why I was hopping
mad. And that was what we had
paid our money for And we
were expected to light our laboratory
with that, I sat down in hot indig
nation and said that the tube con-
tanned a great deal less than l had
expected and didn't do anything like
what | counted on.