Short answers, pulled from the story.
Emil Grubbe of Chicago became the first American physician to use X-rays to treat cancer in 1896. This event launched a medical revolution that unfolded over the next century without fully understanding the dangers involved.
Marie Curie discovered the radioactive elements polonium and radium in 1898. Her groundbreaking work initiated a new era in medical treatment and caused the field of radiation therapy to grow largely.
Radiation therapy works by damaging the DNA of cancer cells, causing them to undergo mitotic catastrophe through direct or indirect ionization of the atoms making up the DNA chain. Indirect ionization occurs as a result of the ionization of water, forming free radicals that damage the DNA.
Cobalt-60 machines have a half-life of 5.27 years. This duration required replacement approximately every five years during the period when Cobalt therapy revolutionized the field between the 1950s and the early 1980s.
Volumetric modulated arc therapy was introduced in 2007. This technique can achieve highly conformal dose distributions on target volume coverage and sparing of normal tissues by rotating the gantry 360 degrees and changing the speed and shape of the beam.
Many common, moderately radioresponsive tumors are routinely treated with curative doses of radiation therapy if they are at an early stage, including non-melanoma skin cancer, head and neck cancer, breast cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, cervical cancer, anal cancer, and prostate cancer.