Medicine: Peacetime Bomb

An elderly housewife with a large cancer in her gullet was wheeled into a basement room in the London, Ont. Victoria Hospital last week. A big lead-cased machine, like an upended cement mixer, was swung into position over her. There was a hissing of air ducts; a small window in the big machine opened for a few minutes, then snapped shut. The patient had received one of the first series of treatments by the first "Cobalt Bomb," medical science's newest weapon against cancer.

The cobalt bomb was developed by Canadian atomic scientists and is the...