About Radiation Oncology
Radiation Therapy, initially developed in the early 1900’s, was used primarily for relieving pain by shrinking tumours, but not often for cure. The earliest Radiotherapy devices used primitive x-ray tubes to generate very week radiation – not enough to effect cures or to penetrate the body very deeply. Next came cobalt machines that offered higher energy but which delivered relatively slow treatments that lengthened in time as the radioactive source within the machine weakened.
