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Show s0ll SHORTAGE 1 EXCITES ATTENTION iff,... Uv,- Supply of Most Valuable ::' - Substitute Is Greatly Diminished by War. n,: i'i 1 Mesothorium, Used as Sub- "J stitute, Has Merit, but ii i II',,; Lacks Long Life. 1 ! 'i I 2 By FREDERIC J. HASKIN. WAriHIXGTOX, Dec. 21. War, ac- i:; cording to go vor.nr.cn t experts, has re-:, re-:, gulled in a serious depletion of our , supp'y of the most valuable substance ' i;j' on earth radium. Reports that a great new deposit had been discovered in r, , Colorado proved to be utterly un-"v un-"v foil vHcd. V, jtdlum has been used extensively as :'- -T material of war, not as might be sup-,.i sup-,.i posed, in treating sick and wounded tsol- i ,:; dlers, but in the form of luminous point ' !-' on gun sights, aviators' instruments, and l-ijrl the ubiquitous officer's wrist watch. 1 In Demand for Dials. The greater part of the radium now being extracted ih used In making lumin-. lumin-. V'Vus dials for watches, says, the geological ., survey. Tile amount of radium that adorns the face of one of these watchets ,, . is inconceivably small. Radium costs about fciUO a millc-grurn. and a watch .dial , carrier ten cc-nts worth. But 1100,000 luminous-faced watches are manufactured yearly by one firm alone. Add to the thousands of luminous watches placed on the market the many other Instruments ,. which must be visible in pitch darkness, . and which draw heavily on the radium 13 supply, and a large proportion of the . three and three-quarter ounces of radium , In existence is accounted for. , As a result of this reckless use of , radium there is little available for sur-; sur-; Eery, which is generally acknowledged as !EH the field in which radium can render cn its greatest service. This situation will ; in a 3'nort time be changed. The cessa- tion of fighting has lessened the speed ' of airplane construction with its atteud-l atteud-l ing demands on luminous paint, he Substitute Is Used. nil Also, mesothorium, an element similar lly to radium, has been called into use. Unlike Un-like radium, which is the product of nd ores, mesothcrium is extracted from a its kind of sand. It was reported recently n- that mesothorium had been discovered in u- the- United States. As a matter of fact in the radio-active properties of monazite sand were underptood in I?razil twelve nd years ago, and geologists of the United r- States have long been aware of its Jo existence in this country. The man who discovered the existence of mesothorium in sand in Brazil wished to to keep his discovery secret In order to ?I1 monopolize the profits. His scheme was to ship the sand to German buyers, eend-;x eend-;x k-? it as common ballast. On one trip, li Aie ship became damaged, and was in vjanser of sinking. When the captain ?d ordered the ballast thrown out, the car-je car-je go owner who was aboard objected, urg-nf urg-nf ing that some other weight be sacrificed, it His attitude aroused suspicion. The ship ,n and ballast were Haved, but, unfortunately for the owner of the precious sand, hih n, ballast was examined and his secret id sprenrt broadcast, with the result that the :o Brazilian government took a hand in ex- ; e.loiting its new ly found resource. 1 Scks Lasting Quality. j Mesothorium is extremely like radium 1 In character and effect. It differs mafn- ly in its life. Radium reaches its fuil power in thirty days and in 2000 years that power would diminish only one-half. Mesothorium, on the other hand, takes a year to gain its full strength, at which !tlme it is as powerful as radium, but in five and one-half years its strength is almost gone. As the life of the aver-ago aver-ago luminous-dial watch is less than five and one-half years, mesothorium is a satisfactory substitute for radium for this purpose. Detecting the presence of radium is ' comparatively simple. It is dene by a' Hinail but compiler. led instrument which A indicates tho proportion of radium in a j piece of ore. Not all ere containing ;j radium is worth the trouble of extracting A the element. Radium is present in nil l oarnotjte ores, but the amount, geologists 4 are fond of explaining, is often as slight i fis the amount of gold in the water' of 4 the ocean. Both radium and gold are j there, but to extract them at a profit' jj ia impossible. j ! Reduction Is Costly. j Even when ore rich enough in radium ! to warrant excavation is located, the cost i of separating tho radium is great. For! one part of radium in this or there are 3,000,000 parts of other substances, and it takes eight carloads of chemicals to treat one ton of ore. The ore is treated with acid to dissolve theuranium and venadktm present. From the aoid solution, solu-tion, tho radium is precipitated, and then collected in much smaller buik, dissolved and precipitated again several times until un-til it is reduced to a form of salts. It is usually kept and used in this form, stored in a casing of lead to protect articles ar-ticles In the vicinity from the effects of the rays. The chief medical uses of radium so far tested have been in treating cancer, tumors, and birthmarks. Some cures have been tffected, some cases have been helped only. Even if radium only alleviates alle-viates the pain of cancer it is, in the opinion of many doctors a Messing. A plausible explanation of the apparent failure of radium to have any notable effect on some cancer cases is tha t radium va3 tried as a lant resort when tho disease was so far advanced that nothing could euro it, and when the ren-eral ren-eral physical condition of the patient was so weakened that it could not respond re-spond to the treatment. Five or six years ago Secretary Lane of the department nf interior supgested government ownership or direction of United States radium deposits, as a means of having radium sent to hospital stations and used for the benefit of the people. l"etaiis of the plan were never formulated, for senators and congressmen congress-men from western states containing radio-active ores opposed the measure so strongly that it was entirely dropped. |