Article by Origène Dufresne in L’Action Universitaire

In l’Action Universitaire, a magazine for graduates of the Université de Montréal, Origène Dufresne, doctor and future Director at the Institute, recounts the beginnings of the Radium Institute at the Université de Montréal :

Extract taken from the Action Universitaire of December 1935 in which Doctor Origène Dufresne writes an article on the Radium Institute.

Inaugurated in the spring of 1923 by the honorable Alexandre Taschereau, Premier of the province of Québec, the new institute with its gram and a quarter of radium purchased by the government at the price of one hundred thousand dollars, and its first devices at two hundred thousand volts provided by the Université de Montréal, settled in the latter’s basement to provide anti-cancer treatments until 1926. 

Wasn’t it painful to see the poor cancer patients slip through the crowds of students and head towards the old disinhabited menagerie to wait their turn to enter the small, poorly lit room, exposed to radium radiation and to the unpleasantness of the neighborhood, where the Director lavished his devoted care on them with a confident smile and consoling kindness. However, despite the cramped and unsanitary conditions of the premises and the defective conditions in which the radium and X-ray treatments were carried out, the number of cures which were accomplished there is surprising.