ABSTRACT
The story of brachytherapy begins in 1898 when Marie and Pierre Curie, working in their laboratory in Paris, succeeded in isolating radium from pitchblende. Within a few years Robert Abbe, an American surgeon, had used radium, with an afterloading technique, to treat cancer. The first English-language textbook of radium therapy, by Wickham and Degrais, was published in 1910.1
Between the end of the First World War and the early 1930s, the major developmental work was carried out in Paris. Basic implantation techniques and clinical indications were defined. Clinical studies in patients with cervical cancer led to an optimization of the radiation dose and dose rate.
