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What if there were a superhero called X-ray Man? What special powers do you think he would have? X-ray Man: able to see through human flesh to spot a broken bone on site; skilled at patrolling airports and scanning for hazardous materials; capable
of curing diseases with a wink of his eye!
Well, at the beginning of the 20th century, there was a real life superhero who might as well have been known as X-ray Woman. Her name? Marie Curie. You might remember her as the woman who, with her husband, discovered radium and received the Nobel Prize for physics not once, but twice.
As if all of that weren't impressive enough, when World War I broke out, Marie Curie looked for ways to help her adopted country, France. Curie had become aware of a new X-ray technology that had been discovered in 1895 by a German physicist named Wilhelm Roentgen. She quickly realized that this new technology could help doctors locate the shrapnel and bullets that would be otherwise hidden in the bodies of wounded soldiers. This might seem fairly obvious now, but at the time it was revolutionary!
Most of the available X-ray machines were in laboratories. Marie Curie quickly had them moved to hospitals, but she soon realized that they were needed on the front lines of the war. So she took an ordinary car and fitted it with X-ray equipment and a generator, which could be run by the car's engine to power the X-ray machine. However, when she tried to drive it to the battlefields, the French Army did not take her seriously. After all, what could a woman, even a two-time Nobel Prize winner, teach them about treating wounded soldiers?
When the doctors in the hospitals on the front lines realized how much Curie's equipment could help them with their operations, the army finally gave in. By the end of the war, Marie Curie had set up more than 200 permanent medical X-ray stations and brought 20 cars, known as "little Curies," with portable X-ray units into service. She also trained the personnel to operate the machines. Thousands of soldiers' lives were saved because of her efforts.
Today, X-ray equipment can travel all over the world to help treat those who wouldn't otherwise have access to the technology. Who knows, with Marie Curie paving the way, those portable X-ray glasses you are dreaming of may one day become a reality!
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