Heat Treatment

Dr. George Walker has been practicing or teaching surgery since 1889. He has been associate professor of surgery at Johns Hopkins University Medical School since 1905. And, although primarily a specialist on ailments of the genitourinary tract, he has been studying the effects of cancer on his menagerie of 4,000 rats. So it was with considerable trustfulness that colleagues last week heard him explain a theory of treating cancer with heat.

Cancer cells perish at a temperature very close to 111 1/2 degrees Fahrenheit. If the patient could be heated to that temperature and kept so for at least half an hour without dying, Professor Walker hypothesized, he would be rid of the cancer cells. But human physiology has prevented the professor from performing a decisive experiment. In the base of the brain there is a kind of nervous thermostat which regulates the temperature of the body. If the body gets too hot or too cold the heat controller immediately strives to bring it back to the normal temperature of 98.4 degrees.

Professor Walker's problem is to manage that brain centre so that it will tolerate the high degrees of heat that he suggests be used to kill the cancer cells.

His difficulty approximates that of the roentgenologist who has learned that x-rays strong enough to sear cancer cells are more than strong enough to sear healthy cells. The cure can be as evil as the ill.