Radium undoubtedly will retard (or even entirely destroy) the growth of malignant tumors, and has proved its worth particularly in the superficial and accessible types of neoplasm. Up to the present time. its use in the larynx has been disappointing, in spite of its brilliant promise at the start, for reasons which will be elaborated later.
A review of some of the more recent reports demonstrates only a meager percentage of probable cures. Quick and Johnson1 report a series of 156 cases. Taking their most favorable group, numbering twenty primary intrinsic operable cases, we find seven patients (35 per cent.) free from clinical evidence of the growth for periods ranging from eight months to three and a half years. Their next group, of fifty-one inoperable but intrinsic cases, yielded eleven patients, including two with malignant granulomas (21 per cent), who showed improvement for periods of from six months to two