The only safe weapons against cancer are: surgery, radium, x-rays – Historic Print
![The only safe weapons against cancer are: surgery, radium, x-rays, [1937] — historic image](https://images.jameslantos.com/img/70/706033755865-L.webp)
(Originally scanned by the Library of Congress. Each image is professionally and digitally cleaned of artifacts such as color bars and extra borders prior to printing.)
Description
The only safe weapons against cancer are: surgery, radium, x-rays comes to life in this historic image, reproduced from the original with every detail intact. It comes from the collections of the Library of Congress, scanned from the original and carefully restored.
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The only safe weapons against cancer are: surgery, radium, x-rays
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Its title makes the claim outright: this 1937 gouache names surgery, radium and x-rays as the only safe weapons against cancer. Those were the main accepted treatments of the day, and the sentence reflects a period when health educators were urging the public to rely on physicians rather than patent medicines and quack cures. Radium was expensive and highly prized, and x-rays had been in medical use for about four decades, so the word "safe" reads as both a warning and an expression of faith in clinical science. The record does not name a maker, so the picture is best understood as popular health education from its moment.
| Created / published | [1937] |
|---|---|
| Genre | Gouaches Color 1930-1940. |
| Notes | Unprocessed in PR 13 CN 1991:200.17 |
| Subjects | Cancer--1930-1940. Health care--1930-1940. |
| Source | Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division |
| Original scan | 3,723 × 4,676 px · prints to 12 × 16 in at 300 dpi |
| Reference | AMZ-SOTP-HPA-219505 |
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