When Madame Curie Went to War


m-curie“The use of the X-rays during the war saved the lives of many wounded men; it also saved many from long suffering and lasting infirmity.” --Marie Curie

After co-discovering radium and polonium, becoming history’s first two-time winner of the Nobel Prize, and breaking the glass ceiling at the legendary Sorbonne University, what did Marie Curie do for an encore? She brought the life-saving wonders of radiology to the front lines of World War I Europe, almost single-handedly transforming military medicine and saving untold thousands of lives.

On this seventy-fifth anniversary year of Curie’s death — and as allied military operations continue in Iraq and Afghanistan — ACR Daily News Scan recalls the contributions made some 90 years ago by this “mother of atomic physics.” Curie’s bold, pioneering work in that most challenging of arenas reminds us of the giants who gave birth to and nurtured our profession, and continue to inspire us today.

When “the war to end all wars” erupted in 1914, Curie — then poised to helm the Radium Institute in Paris — recognized that ambulatory diagnostic X-ray technology could give military field hospitals the ability to quickly and accurately diagnose injuries. Onlookers dismissed her vision as overly ambitious, but Curie wouldn’t take no for an answer. The barriers she faced were many:

  • No Equipment. At the outset of hostilities, radiographic equipment in France was scarce even in the best hospitals. Curie set two objectives: To install permanent units in hospitals along the war zone and to convert civilian vehicles into roving X-ray units that could reach wounded soldiers along the ever-shifting lines of battle.
  • Little Funding. When French officials announced that the state’s coffers were nearly empty, Curie used the cash proceeds from her Nobel prizes to buy war bonds, then sought additional funding from wealthy female acquaintances. She even tapped French nobles to donate limousines to create her fleet of “radiologic cars.”
  • Meddling Bureaucracy. When the French government’s tangle of red tape threatened to immobilize Curie, she alternately charmed and cajoled officials to cut her loose. Among the challenges: Gaining permission to let women travel to the war-torn Eastern front. Against all odds, Curie obtained approval for her volunteers. Curie traveled to the Front more than 30 times during this four-year “war to end all wars.”
  • Outdated Command. Curie understood that French medical officers reporting to non-medical line officers guaranteed a substandard medical outcome. To complicate matters, army personnel acted as gatekeepers to medical supplies, and kept surgeons 35 or more miles from battlefields—all with catastrophic effect. Curie encouraged change at every level.

Curie faced her own personal limitations. Though a gifted researcher, she knew precious little about medical diagnostics or radiography. Equally problematic, she had never so much as driven an automobile. To get herself up to speed, she took cram courses in anatomy, became proficient in radiography, and learned how to operate and repair motor vehicles.

Curie set out to staff hospitals with radiologic technicians (or ‘‘manipulatrices”) by instituting a formal program of study at a Paris hospital. She even trained and appointed as her first radiologic assistant her 17-year-old daughter, Irene (who herself received a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1935). By war’s end, in 1919, Curie would train more than 150 women — some nurses, some chambermaids — to operate radiolographic equipment at the outposts that Curie herself set up.

In November 1914, Curie brushed aside warnings, fired up her prototype “petite Curie” vehicle, and motored toward the Eastern Front. Her courage was exceptional, as mechanized warfare was already inflicting heavy losses that would eventually total some 10 million combat deaths and 21 million wounded. Of the injured, almost 500,000 were amputees, but many were able to live because of Curie’s ambulatory services.

As Coppes and Arty R. Coppes-Zantinga note in “Silhouette: Marie Curie’s Contributions to Radiology During World War I,” Curie placed mobile X-ray units inside tents and rooms darkened with black-out curtains, and powered the units with an electrical generator driven by car engine. There, she and other radiographers examined and x-rayed the wounded. All told, the future Nobel laureate equipped some 20 ‘‘petites Curies’,’ 200 permanent radiology posts, and is credited with examining more than one million war wounded.

Curie discussed her wartime experiences in her 1921 tome, ‘‘Radiology in War.”

* Coppes and Coppes-Zantinga’s article, “Silhouette: Marie Curie’s Contributions to Radiology During World War I,” is found in Medical and Pediatric Oncology 31:541-542 (1998).