Aquila Children's Magazine The Electric Issue | Page 21

t all my
‘I am resolved to pu
of my
strength at the service
ce I
adopted country, sin
for my
cannot do anything
untry
unfortunate native co
just now.’
ngevin
– Marie Curie to Paul La
LITTLE CURIES
German bombs began to fall on
Paris on 2 September 1914.
Germany had declared war on
France and The Institute of Radium
had to shut temporarily because –
like all able-bodied young men –
Marie’s researchers had been called
to serve in the armed forces.
France’s entire stock of radium was
comprised of the single gram in
Marie’s lab. She took it to Bordeaux,
to where the French government had
relocated. She travelled by train with the
radium secured inside a heavy lead box,
and she left it safe inside a deposit box.
Her place, she’d decided, was in Paris –
there was still work to be done.
Marie borrowed cars from rich
aquaintances. She convinced
automobile body shops to
turn the cars into trucks
and begged French
manufacturers to donate
equipment. She learned
how to drive and how to
change tyres and fix the
trucks. She taught
other women how to
take X-rays too. By late
October 1914 there
were 20 of these
mobile radiology units ready to be fitted
out and taken into war zones. Doctors
were now able to see bullets, shrapnel
and broken bones inside patients’
bodies. The use of these Little Curies – as
they became known – saved the lives of
hundreds of thousands of wounded
servicemen. W hat’s more, they rescued
thousands of others from years of
suffering and disability.
Marie in her
laboratory
Wherever Marie went she used her
influence to raise money for scientific
research. ‘One never notices what has
been done; one can only see what
remains to be done,’ she said. She died
from a blood disorder in 1943, aged 67,
killed by poison from the very
substances she had struggled to
understand and which now can do so
much good in the treatment of diseases
like cancer. The word ‘curie’ came into
the English language as a unit of
measuring radioactivity and the
organisation that has taken her name,
Marie Curie, provides care and support
for people living with terminal illness
and their families. The organisation
helped to care for over 40,000 people
across the United Kingdom last year.
Ian
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