The Fall Of Radioactive Therapy And Rise Of Radiotherapy

Radiotherapy is one of three front-line treatments used in the treatment of lesions, tumours and malignant cancers, and the earlier a cancer diagnosis is acquired, the more likely it is that visiting a radiotherapy centre is the primary, if not only, treatment pathway for patients.

This has been the case for nearly a century since Henri Coutard’s method of protracted-fractional radiation doses allowed for the aggressive benefits of radiation to be maximised whilst limiting exposure to radioactivity.

It took a fundamental shift in the scientific community’s relationship with radioactivity and a greater focus on safety and care when it came to exposure to radiation in order for this to occur.

The Importance Of Why

After William Roentgen discovered X-rays, it created a wave of interest in the new field of radioactivity and specifically radiotherapy, at the time known as Roentgentherapy after him.

Within a year of the first X-ray, people with cancer had been treated with radioactive materials with varying degrees of success and control in the tests.

The problem was that researchers knew that it worked, but were far less sure about why it worked, due to a lack of understanding about radiation and a misunderstanding about the causes of cancer.

Radiotherapy for cancer was discovered largely by accident, therefore; cancer was believed at the time to be a parasite that could be disinfected using radiation and it was only the result of chance that Victor Despeignes, Emil Grubbe, Eduard Schiff and Léopold Freund figured out its potential for fighting cancer.

This potential became the dominant driving force both in medicine and wider culture, despite a lack of an answer to the question of why it seemed to work. This is vital because this lack of understanding within the medical community at the time and lack of communication outside of it led to a lot of people getting the wrong idea as to why it worked.

This led to a phase known as radium mania or radiomania, where radioactivity was used as an inappropriate ingredient for a wide variety of products that had no clue how radiation helped to treat cancer but associated it with vigour and vitality.

This included a line of makeup products containing radium known as Tho-Radia, famous for both trying to falsely claim a connection to Marie and Pierre Curie via a similarly named but irrelevant doctor, and a highly successful marketing campaign featuring a blond woman lit from underneath as if she had a radioactive glow.

The most infamous of these, however, was Radithor, a radium salt solution sold as a generic restorative, which in the most unusual way possible led to the rise of radiotherapy as a serious medical practice by making people take radiation seriously.

Power And Responsibility

Radiation therapy is exceptionally powerful, but that power in modern radiosurgery and radiotherapy is used carefully, sparingly and proportionally to the condition being treated.

Part of that came from the Coutard method of fractionalised doses, but another part of that came through a stark reminder of the care that needs to be taken with the power of radiation.

This started in the 1920s with the Radium Girls, a group of watch-dial painters who had become deeply ill with radiation poisoning as the result of a callous disregard for their safety by management.

By 1925, Harrison Martland had proved decisively that their deaths were caused by radium ingestion, which led to a decade-long legal battle and one of the first successful cases brought against a company for their dereliction in the duty of care to their employees.

Around the same time, a young industrialist and aspiring golfer by the name of Eben Byers had hurt his arm after falling from his bed whilst riding in the sleeper carriage of a train. 

He was suggested Radithor by his doctor and would proceed to take 1400 doses of the radioactive solution between 1927 and 1930, only stopping when the effects of cancer started to take serious effect. He died on 31st March 1932.

This led to the end of a period of rank irresponsibility when it came to radiation and a rather universal understanding that its powerful effects on treating tumours and lesions needed to be harnessed carefully and used sparingly.

It led to the end of radioactive therapies and the rise of more advanced radiation therapy, which after increasingly sophisticated treatment systems became a primary front-line treatment alongside chemotherapy and surgery, with a combination of all three used as appropriate to help treat a devastating disease.