Evening star., 1940-04-22
BY THOMAS r. HENRY,

Water jet surgery, an hitherto un-
suspected way of getting through the
skin without breaking it, was de-
scribed for the first time to the Ma
tional Academy of Sciences meeting
here today.
Extremely fine needles of water
propelled with a force of $4,000
pounds per square inch will go
through the interstices of the sup
posedly watertight human skin and
penetrate the underlying tissues. 1t
was announced by Drs. G.. Failla
and T. B. Folsom of Memorial Hos
pital. New York. This newly dis
covered phenomenon, they explained,
may prove of some value in the
treatment of cancer, although as yet
1t is IN highly experimental stage.
A recently proposed technique is
to introduce water into a malignant
tumor before bombarding it with
X-rays. The water molecules act
like planted bombs in the tissue.
Struck by the X-rays they send out
fragments to hit and kill nearby
cells. The technique up to the
present has been to introduce water
into the malignant growth by means
OF an extremely small needle.
During the past two or three years
hundreds of artificial radiums'
have been produced by lombard
ment of atoms. Some of these can
be obtained in the form of liquid
solutions Or suspensions. Best effects
are produced if they can actually
be put inside cancer. The new
water jet surgery offers the best
method of getting them there.
The technique first occurred to
them, the New York doctors said,
from observation of a curious injury
to oil workers working with oil under
high pressure The particles of oil
were found in tissues at some dis
tances under the skin. The men
had not been aware that this had
happened. The penetration had
gone on without any discomfort.
Experimenting with water jets.
DR.. Failla said. they have found
that stream two-thousands of an
inch in diameter will go through the
skin to a depth of nearly an inch,
depending on the nature of the It's
sue underneath. Such a jet will
penetrate nearly 3 inches through
the skin and into the flesh of a raw
potato.
They have not yet determined,
however, the optimum pressure or
jet diameter. Also, they stressed,
there is one serious objection to this
hydrosurgery-the amount of air
which will be carried into the tissue
with the water unless special safe
guards are taken. Up to the present,
they said, they have been unable to
find any very decided advantage for
their new method over putting water
into tumors by fine needles.
Race Vanished Without Trace.
The long search for the red mans
Eden may have ended in the cold,
desolate depths of Siberia, DR.. Ales
Hrdlicka, curator of physical an
thropology of the Smithsonian In
stitution, told the academy.
In the country watered by the
Angara River a race vanished with
out a trace between 1000 and 5000
years ago. They were men of the
new stone age. They constitute a
missing link between the cave man
of the East European ice age and the
copper skinned aboriginals found in
the New World by the earliest white
explorers, Dr. Hrdlicka said.
Many of their skulls and other
bones have been preserved, DR..
Hrdlicka said. He made an inten-
sive study Of them this summer, in
cooperation with Russian anthro-
biologists. They not only correspond
closely to the bones of the American
Indian in general, he said, but to