An Improved Model of a Portable Electroscope for use in Hospitals

Abstract

In spite of the careful watch over the stock of radium needles and applicators in most hospitals a tube or applicator will occasionally get lost. In view of the high monetary value attaching to the smallest of applicators it is highly desirable to have some means of tracking down the missing radium. On account of the small size of the radium applicators, it would be very difficult indeed to search for them by eye, especially in a large hospital where the radium has to be transferred over considerable distances for use in various cases; indeed one often discovers that the missing radium has found its way to the incinerators among the soiled dressings. One can imagine the difficulty of the task of searching the ashes of a furnace with the naked eye. It would be a task almost as impossible as that of looking for the proverbial needle in the haystack were it not for the very important property of all radio-active substances of emitting ionising radiations. The tell-tale β and γ rays from a radium tube afford ...