100 YEARS AGO

The practicability of effecting the purification of town sewage on the large scale by bacterial agency has now been abundantly proved. The process has passed beyond the experimental stage, and must now be acknowledged as the only method which can convert the putrescible matter of sewage on the large scale into inoffensive and harmless substances. Accordingly all trustworthy information respecting the results which have been arrived at from the lengthy experimental trials, and from the application of these results on the large scale, will be welcome to public sanitary authorities, and perhaps even still more acceptable to the professional advisers of these bodies. The treatise under review has been written by one who has carefully watched the progress, and who has had a long and varied experience, of bacterial treatment. The book is, therefore, undoubtedly worthy of careful perusal and consideration by those who are responsible for disposing of the sewage from houses, villages or towns.

From Nature 12 December 1901.

50 YEARS AGO

Teletherapy units using radium are limited in usefulness by the low radiation intensities produced by the small amounts of radium which can be used. To secure an adequate dosage-rate, the distance between the source and the tumour cannot be more than a few centimetres, and therefore the dose delivered to the skin lying between the source and the tumour is much higher than that delivered to the tumour. The dose-rate below the surface, expressed as a percentage of the dose-rate at the skin, decreases very rapidly with increasing depth. Thus the percentage depth-dose is influenced primarily by the inverse square law, and one of the chief advantages of high-energy radiation, namely, its small attenuation by the tissue between the source and the tumour, is not realized. Any attempt to obtain an improvement in the depth-dose by increasing the amount of radium, and correspondingly improving the ratio between the source-to-tumour distance and the source-to-skin distance, is limited by the high cost of radium, and by the required increase in the volume of the source. If the diameter of the source is increased, it is harder to get a well-defined beam; if the thickness in increased, much of the radiation is lost by absorption within the source.

From Nature 15 December 1951.