Silver screen’s great survivor
QUESTION Hollywood actor William Powell survived for 46 years following cancer treatment that involved the insertion of radium pellets. Is this treatment still used? The insertion of radium pellets in special applicators was a treatment for cancer until the early Forties when it was superseded by chemotherapy.
Dapper, moustachioed William Powell was a star at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, most famous for the Thin Man series of films in which he co-starred with Myrna Loy as husband and wife detectives.
Powell had been twice married when he began a relationship with the movie actress Jean harlow in 1934. They were engaged when she died in 1937 at the age of 26 of kidney failure.
he was devastated and took a break from filming. This was followed by bouts of ill health. Stomach and intestinal problems were eventually diagnosed as bowel cancer.
Powell checked into the hollywoodbased Tumour Institute, which was famous for treating movie stars.
After treatment with radium pellets, he went on to star in movies until 1955, living to the ripe old age of 92.
Adam Morrison, Pangbourne, Berks. X-rAyS were discovered in 1895 by Wilhelm Conrad roentgen, a professor at Wuerzburg University in Germany.
In January 1896, Chicago physician emile Grubbe, having noted how X-rays burnt his own skin, attempted to ‘burn out’ a patient’s breast cancer.
Though this was unsuccessful, by November that year, X-rays were being used to treat skin cancers.
After Marie Curie and her husband Pierre identified the radioactive element radium in 1898, the French dermatologist ernest Besnier suggested it could be used to treat cancer.
radium mainly emits alpha particles, which are far more powerful but less penetrative than X-rays, therefore to treat cancers it had to be applied directly to the site.
In 1904, John MacLeod, a physician at Dapper actor: William Powell with co-star Myrna Loy in The Thin Man Charing Cross hospital in London, devised radium applicators for internal use. These flexible tubes had a cavity at one end into which a glass phial containing radium salt could be inserted. The applicator could be used to treat throat, uterine and bowel cancers.
Dr Helen Murray, London N1.
QUESTION What is the origin of the saying ‘no good deed goes unpunished’?
ThIS phrase has a slightly different meaning than you might expect.
It doesn’t mean that the person doing the good deed will suffer some sort of retribution, but that the good deed may not achieve the recognition it deserves or the recipient of the good deed may feel they deserve more.
This could lead the person doing the good deed to suffer inconvenience as they endeavour to bridge the gap between what was done and what was expected. The inconvenience or lack of recognition is the punishment.
The phrase ‘every good deed brings its own punishment’ has been attributed to Oscar Wilde. however, the first citation goes back to the 12th century.
Courtier Walter Map wrote De Nugis Curialium (Courtiers Trifles), which was translated from Latin in 1923 by Oxford University scholar, M. r. James.
From this translation the key phrase appears: ‘he spared none of his band who inclined to spare any, left no good deed unpunished, no bad one unrewarded.’
The phrase’s next appearance was in an article in The Windsor Magazine entitled A Breaker Of hearts by Marie Belloc Lowndes in 1927.
Bob Cubitt, Northampton. QUESTION In his diary, Samuel Pepys writes of a song he wrote called Beauty Retire. Has it been recorded? FUrTher to the earlier answer, Pepys was not only an amateur composer, but sang, danced and performed on a variety of instruments, including the viol, spinet, lute, recorder and flageolet, a type of flute played like a recorder.
his music teacher, Thomas Greeting, is often mentioned in the diary.
While Pepys praised the lute playing and a ‘fine anthem’ by his contemporary Pelham humfrey (also Pellam humphrys and humphrey), he did not like him as a person, as we read in the famous diary entry of November 15, 1667:
‘Thence away home (calling at my mercer and tailor’s) and there find as I expected Mr Caesar and little Pellam humphrys, lately returned from France and is an absolute monsieur, as full of form and confidence and vanity, and disparages everything and everybody’s skill but his own.
‘The truth is everybody says he is very able . . .’ (the rest of the entry is not suitable for publication in a family paper!)
humfrey succeeded his teacher and father-in-law henry (‘Captain’) Cooke as master of the Children of the Chapel royal. One of his best-known compositions is his setting of the poem A hymn To God The Father by John Donne.
he died in 1674, aged 27, a great loss to english music, and is buried in Westminster Abbey. E. Felix Schoendorfer,
Stoke Poges, Bucks.
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