Changing patterns in malignant disease and its treatment. Presidential Address delivered at The British Institute of Radiology on May 15, 1975

1977 
The treatment of malignant disease by X rays was first recorded at The London Hospital on August 10, 1903. The first X ray case book, as it was called, of the X-ray and Electrical Department, records on its first page the treatment of Elizabeth Sidgewick of Bow, a widow aged 55 who had a left mastectomy performed by Sir Victor Horsley in Saint Bartholomew's Hospital six years previously. Her records state that she was referred from the National Hospital for the Paralysed. She was complaining of pain down the right leg, extending from the groin to the knee, due to bone involvement by cancer and that glands were also involved. X ray treatment was started. Over three years' later the annotation written clearly in the legible handwriting of the period states that she was “still going strong, apart from lameness”. A most remarkable and encouraging result for palliative radiotherapy. Glaring omissions from this early account of treatment are a complete lack of information with reference to dose, treated area, o...
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