MADAME CURIE FIGHTS A WAR

DOI: 10.4324/9781003239284-18

"ONE NEVER NOTICES WHAT HAD BEEN DONE: ONE CAN ONLY SEE WHAT REMAINS TO BE DONE."

—MARIE CURIE

It was the fall of 1914, and the Great War was raging across France. A soldier lay on the stretcher groaning in pain. His back and legs showed the effects of shrapnel from mortar rounds. A nurse worked to calm him, while the doctor stood nearby talking to a small middle-aged woman sitting inside a truck.

The woman listened closely to the doctor and nodded. In a few minutes, the woman and doctor were unloading equipment from the truck. They pulled out one of the newfangled X-ray machines and began to scan the soldier’s body.

The woman was the famous scientist Madame Marie Curie, and the truck carrying portable X-ray equipment was her brainchild. The two-time Nobel Prize-winning scientist wanted to help her adopted country, France, and she realized that X-rays were the best service she could provide. If she could get X-ray machines to the battlefield hospitals, then they would help doctors set broken bones and see bullets and shrapnel hidden in the body. But to do so would also be a dangerous mission. Madame Curie and anyone helping her would be in the direct line of fire. It was an experiment that could give life to soldiers, but death to Curie.

Marie Curie, 1920

Marie Curie convinced the government of France to name her the Director of the Red Cross Radiology Service. Then she asked for donations of cars and money from wealthy friends. She took the cars and trucks to automobile body shops and had them transformed into vans that could haul her specially designed portable X-ray machines.

The grateful French soldiers started calling the mobile X-ray labs “petite Curies,” and by October of 1914, there were 20 radiology vans on the battlefield. Curie herself trained radiological assistants to help on the front lines. Her first trainee was her 17-year-old daughter, Irene. Curie taught herself how to drive the vans and learned auto mechanics so she could do repairs when they broke down.

By 1916, Curie had established 200 stationary X-ray units and was training women as assistants at her Radium Institute. Over the course of the war, she trained 150 women who went to work at the war front.

After the war, Curie continued to invent new ways to use radium in helping the wounded. She began using a technique to collect a radioactive gas that was emitted from the radium. She worked alone using an electric pump to collect the gas in tiny glass tubes about a centimeter long. The gas was delivered to hospitals where the doctors placed the radioactive tube in platinum needles. Medical staff placed the needles in the patients' bodies where there was diseased tissue. It was radiation therapy on the battlefield.

By 1916, Curie had established 200 stationary X-ray units and was training women as assistants at her Radium Institute.

The war ended in 1918, but Curie continued her war work for another year. She spent time teaching a group of American soldiers about radiology. Curie was never recognized for her work in the war effort, but her invention and innovation saved countless lives.

She is still best known for winning the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1903 and in Chemistry in 1911. But this groundbreaking woman was a person of many talents. She died in 1934 from aplastic anemia, a blood disease that is now known to result from too much exposure to radiation. She gave her life for science.

GLOWING PAPERS

Marie Curie and her husband Pierre did not realize how dangerous radioactive particles can be. Marie carried vials of polonium and radium in the pocket of her coat and stored them in her desk drawer. She even kept a little tube of polonium on her bedside table as a nightlight, because the radioactive material glowed in the dark.

Today Marie Curie's research papers, her lab notes, her furniture, and even her cookbooks are still radioactive. Her collections are housed at France's Bibliotéque Nationale. All the papers are stored in lead-lined boxes to protect visitors and workers from the effects of radiation. Anyone who wants to read her papers must wear a special suit that protects from radiation poisoning and sign a waiver of liability, stating he or she will not sue the library if he or she gets radiation sickness.