Howard Atwood Kelly, one of the founding physicians of Johns Hopkins Hospital, was a major pioneer in the medical use of radium to treat cancer. His first patient was his own aunt in 1904, who died shortly after surgery. Kelly was known to use excessive amounts of radium to treat various cancers and tumors. As a result, some of his patients died from radium exposure. His method of radium application was inserting a radium capsule near the affected area, then sewing the radium "points" directly to the tumor. This was the same method used to treat Henrietta Lacks, the host of the original HeLa cells, for cervical cancer. Currently, safer and more available radioisotopes are used instead.