From the May 20, 1933, issue
LARGEST X-RAY TUBE BEGINS TO BATTLE AGAINST CANCER
The mightiest weapon yet to enter the war against cancer was put in operation at the Mercy Hospital Institute of Radiation Therapy of Chicago. It is a new, 800,000-volt X-ray tube that, operating on a current of 1/100 of an ampere, is estimated to emit radiation equal in quantity to that from $75,000,000 worth of radium.
The giant tube is 14 feet long and is composed of two sections. It was built at Schenectady by Dr. W.D. Coolidge and his associates. The apparatus exceeds by 100,000 volts the working voltage of any other installation known to be in regular operation, the General Electric Co. says, and has a current capacity twice as great as that of any other very-high-voltage X-ray tube and machine.
CHLORIDE INK TEST PROMISES GREAT AID TO DETECTIVES
The way of the transgressor is hard. Especially if he tries fraudulent alteration of documents written with common pen and ink. The Austrian police will get him with a chloride print.
Dr. Siegfried Türkel, research chemist for the police administration of Vienna, and associates, have recently revealed new chemical methods of detecting writing ink in places where it does not belong.
With a great variety of inks on the market, a forger can readily imitate the color of the writing in a will or deed, to the possible discomfiture of parties concerned. The Vienna experts observed that all writing inks contain chlorides but in a widely variant quantity. The chloride, of which common salt is a variety, slowly spreads in paper, though being colorless is invisible to the human eye. Dr. Türkel, by a simple chemical reaction, replaces the chloride in a document by metallic silver, deposited as a black image like that of a Kodak print. In the same operation he bleaches out the normal ink dye. The document, photographed to yield a chloride print, now takes on a new appearance, depending on its age: One hour old, clear black writing; 1 day, clear, but with broadened lines; 4 days, margin of pen stroke hazy; 10 days, quite fuzzy; 60 days, small loops in letters filled up; 6 months, small writing illegible; 1 to 2 years, entirely illegible.
ELECTRICITY RESTORES HEARTBEAT AFTER SEWING UP OF WOUND
A man whose heart has ceased its normal rhythmic activity as a result of an accident and has gone into a state of twitching in which it circulates no blood may be recovered by a strong electrical counter shock, according to a report received by Dr. William B. Kouwenhoven, professor of electrical engineering at Johns Hopkins University, from a surgeon whose name has not yet been revealed.
The discovery that such an electrical counter-shock will bring the heart to rest but will permit the restoration of the organ to its normal functioning when the circuit is broken was originally made at Johns Hopkins University by Dr. Kouwenhoven and Dr. Donald R. Hooker, of the School of Hygiene, and Dr. Orthello R. Langworthy, associate professor of neurology.
The discovery has now been applied successfully in the treatment of patients. The surgeon reporting wrote that he has been able to set the heart working uniformly after such delicate operations as the sewing up of a knife wound in the heart. The necessary electrical apparatus has been installed over the operating table, he said.