Optimal dose levels, time intervals
for treatment to take advantage
of the mitotic cycle, ways of protecting
normal parts of the patient,
medical care to protect patients
against infections, and other products
of white blood-cell radiation
destruction all began to contribute
to improved radiation treatment.
Even so, surgery remained the first
choice of treatment for many kinds
of cancers, leaving radiation as an
adjunctive method for destroying
cancer cells not removed by surgery
and for trying to control metastases
from advanced cancers.
DURING THE FIRST four
decades of this century,
many advances in medical
radiation uses came from gradual
improvements in equipment and
techniques. The availability of X-ray
machines in military hospitals during
World War I convinced many
physicians of the usefulness of X-ray
studies in detection of somatic problems,
as well as trauma. A chest
X ray became the standard method
of diagnosing tuberculosis. About all
that could be offered the active
tubercular patient was nursing care,
but isolation of such patients helped
to break the spread of the highly
contagious disease to other family
members and co-workers. Tuberculosis
was the target of the first X-ray
population screening efforts.
The creation of artificial isotopes
in the 1930s by Frédéric Joliot and
Irene Curie, daughter of Pierre and
Marie, opened new dimensions in
radiation science. Soon, Ernest
Lawrence was making artificial isotopes
in the cyclotron of the Donner