Cancer Indicator

That the blood of cancerous people is less acid than the blood of normal people is well-known. A proper balance between hydrogen (acid) ions and hydroxyl (alkaline) ions is essential to health and normal cell growth. Too much alkalinity lets cells grow wild. That is one reason why radium and x-rays are used to treat cancer. They make blood acidulous. If doctors could easily and quickly tell the blood's hydrogen ion strength, they could use proper therapeutic means to prevent and treat cancer.

A machine to indicate just that has now been invented, the University of Pennsylvania graduate school of medicine announced last week.

It depends on the fact that fluids (like blood) conduct electricity more or less easily according to their hydrogen ion concentration. But the differences in conductivity between good and bad blood are very slight. So the University of Pennsylvania researchers were obliged to amplify with radio tubes the weak current that blood can carry and invent a precision voltometer that shows 400 gradations between zero and one volt. The turning of a few switches shows the exact blood condition.