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Marie Curie's own account of wartime radiology and of the radon service she ran: what she saw, what worked, and what peacetime medicine should learn. A small book with a large argument, that pure science finds unexpected uses.
After the armistice Marie Curie wrote up her war. *La Radiologie et la guerre* appeared in 1921 in Émile Borel's Nouvelle collection scientifique, with figures and plates.
It explains in plain terms how X-rays locate projectiles and fractures, how her radiological cars and fixed posts were organised, how she trained operators, and how she supplied hospitals with sealed glass bulbs of radon drawn from her single gram of radium, which she prepared herself with little protection. The plates reproduce radiographs of wounded hands and limbs with metal fragments clearly visible.
Its larger theme is that discoveries made for pure science can take on an unsuspected importance in practice. In her autobiographical notes she called it a small book meant to show the vital importance of radiology.
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Images: public domain / no known copyright restrictions (Internet Archive Book Images), via Wikimedia Commons.
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by Mei Lin 