Patients with advanced malignant growths should be, and in most cases are, treated palliatively with roentgen rays or radium. The alleviation of symptoms when these agents are properly employed, in appropriate dosage, is too well known to require comment, yet it is striking how often we see what is considered a cancerocidal dose administered to a hopelessly incurable patient. We must, unfortunately, consider three out of every four cases referred to us as incurable. In most instances it is obvious which patients have early and sufficiently localized lesions to receive cancerocidal quantities of radiation. In such cases even a severe reaction is a small price to pay for eradication of the neoplasm. In the hopeless cases, however, the radiation reactions are without such compensation and are frequently so severe that the patient suffers more from the treatment than from the disease. This is well exemplified in the treatment of prostatic cancer, either with platinum radium needles or radon seeds, when the im...