The Treatment of Cancer of the Uterine Cervix by Radium and X-ray Therapy

Abstract

Radium was used in the treatment of carcinoma of the cervix in 1903, and reports on its therapeutic effects were published as early as 1904 (Abbe, 1903). It was then applied empirically with considerable success, but without much experience of its biological effects, and with insufficient screenage. When Forssell and Heyman developed the Stock-holm Technique they put to clinical use biological and physical principles which had been found out later, particularly the necessity to screen off β radiation, and they used heavily screened radium tubes. They had great success and the Stockholm method of treatment emerged. The technique now used at Stockholm by Hans Kottmeier and others, pays more attention to individual variations than is generally supposed and particular care is taken to adjust the treatment to suit the case. This is a point worth emphasising as there is always a tendency to standardise radiotherapeutic techniques, whereas the disease does not conform to standards or contain itself within narrow limits and it must be countered by determined measures. Up to the 1940s external irradiation by deep X-ray therapy played a relatively ineffective part in the radical treatment of cervical cancer and the value of X rays in the 200 to 300 kV range as an adjunct to radium was problematical. Baclesse dispelled this doubt and did much to advance the science of radiotherapy by showing that X-ray therapy alone could control and sometimes cure advanced cases of carcinoma of the cervix which were beyond radical treatment by other methods.