Science and the Lay Press

Abstract

MANY “lay” journalists will have welcomed the comments in NATURE of October 9 (p. 172) on the “sensational paragraphs to the effect that Sir Frederick Treves had announced at the Radium Institute ‘a complete revolution in the future of radium.’” For the undue enthusiasm shown, the Radium Institute is partly to blame. Sir Frederick claimed credit on behalf of it for the discovery that emanation was as valuable as radium in the treatment of cancer, and when Mr. Pinch was describing the good results obtained with emanation water in the treatment of arthritis deformans he interpolated the remark that this was something new in medicine. Undoubtedly, too, the impression was created in the minds of many of those present that by utilising emanation a gram of radium could be made to do the work of several grams. While in the matter of comment several newspapers fell into gross errors, they did little more than translate into popular language the sense of what was said.