Siebenrock leo v (1 risultati)

BKW, 48/27. - Berlin, August Hirschwald, 3. Juli 1911, 4°, pp.1213-1264, feine Broschur. First Print! Causes of Leukemia in Human Beings - "Compared with laboratory mice, humans have always been poor subjects for studying the cause of leukemia. Genetically, they are far from pure, and they cannot be experimented upon. Therefore, such knowledge as we have has come from more or less fortuitous observations together with a modicum of epidemiology. Even so, there is now a fairly impressive body of evidence which suggests that mice and humans may not be too far apart in the origins of their leukemias. By far the best-known and most thoroughly established etiologic factors in human leukemia are ionizing radiations: x-rays, gamma rays, atomic radiation, and others. The event that brought this home to people everywhere was the dropping of the atom bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, with its sequel in the form of a rise in the incidence of leukemia. This began about 3 years after the bombing, reached a peak in 6 years, and then slowly declined. Much the greatest incidence of leukemia was found among those closest to the explosion, whereas at a distance of 2000 m or more the risk was no greater than among the unirradiated people. From this it could be concluded that ionizing radiations, including gamma rays and neutrons, could cause leukemia and that their effect depended on the size of the dose. Evidently it also depended on at least one additional factor, namely personal susceptibility, for only a small proportion of all those irradiated developed the disease. Altogether some 250 cases of leukemia occurred between 1946 and 1965 in the 183,000 people exposed to radiation in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Although this was the most spectacular demonstration, the relationship between radiation and leukemia had been strongly suspected long before the atomic bombings. As early as 1911, Nikolaus Jagic (1875-1956), one of the luminaries of the Vienna School of Medicine, had reported cases of leukemia among radiologists, and there have been many similar case histories since, most of them originating in the United States.…