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46 CURIE, Marie. La Radiologie et La Guerre. Paris: Félix Alcan, 1921 Octavo. Original pale orange printed paper wrappers and spine carefully laid onto stiff card, edges uncut and unopened. With the glassine jacket. Housed in a dark blue cloth flat-back box, black morocco spine label. 16 black and white photographic plates including X-ray plates demonstrating fractures and photographs of military X-ray units, several diagrams to the text. Red ink annotation to front wrapper, “[?]Gobelius 58.02”. Spine chipped in plac- es, leaf pp. 3–4 partly split at gutter, half-title stitched, edges very friable resulting in several short splits and minor loss to top corners of pp. 17–18 and 23–24, contents browned. A very good copy of a fragile publication. first edition, significant presentation copy, inscribed by curie to the french journalist yvonne sarcey, using her true name, “A Madame Madeleine Brisson M. Curie”, on the front free endpaper. Madeleine Brisson (1869–1950), more famous- ly known as Yvonne Sarcey, chose the pseudonym to acknowledge her heritage: the prominent literary critic Francisque Sarcey was her father. In 1907 Brisson founded L’Université des Annales, a symposia series which became known for its prestigious speakers, and for which Marie Curie lectured at Brisson’s invitation. Brisson also edited the conference journal and penned the women’s col- umn, “Cousin Yvonne’s Chronicle”, in the weekly newspaper Les Annales , which was run by her husband, Adolphe Brisson, and her son Pierre, later the director of Le Figaro . In this scarce and little-known work by the Nobel prize-winner, Curie lays out the importance of medical radiology in wartime, par- ticularly the necessity of providing mobile radiology units and the success of the “double image” X-ray in locating shrapnel or broken bones. The declaration of war prevented Curie’s new Institute of Radium from opening after the completion of its building in July 1914, and “immediately recognising the need for mobile radiolog- ical equipment on the battlefield, Curie approached French gov- ernment officials with a plan of action. Appointed director of the Red Cross Radiology Service, she solicited money and equipment from individuals and corporations for the establishment of a fleet of X-ray cars. Together with her daughter Irene, Curie visited the battlefields herself and whenever possible established fixed radi- ological stations. She turned the unused Institute of Radium into
a school for training young women in X-ray technique and, again with Irene as assistant, conducted the classes herself” (Ogilvie & Harvey, pp. 314–15). The work is notably scarce, with just three appearances record- ed at auction since 1939 (Trotting Hill Park Books 1991, ex-library leather-bound copy; Sotheby’s 1975, Marie Mattingly Meloney’s copy; Parke Bernet 1939, presentation copy to one “Mr le Dr Kuns”). Ogilvie, Marilyn, & Joy Harvey (eds.), Dictionary of Women in Science , Routledge, 2000, pp. 311–17. £7,500 [130989] 47 CURIE, Marie. Pierre Curie. New York: The Macmillan Company, 1923 Octavo. Original black quarter cloth, spine lettered in gilt, blue paper-cov- ered boards, unopened. Photographic portrait of Marie Curie after a paint- ing by Leonabel Jacobs tipped-in before limitation leaf; photographic fron- tispiece of Pierre Curie, and 7 plates. Cloth spine a little soiled, a few faint marks to boards, endpapers slightly spotted with some minor dampstain at the top of the inner margin, appearing again on the copyright page and facing page, else the contents bright and clean. signed limited edition, number 25 of 100 copies signed by the author. Curie’s biography of her late husband, the French physicist Pierre Curie, also includes an autobiographical piece in which she hoped to convey “an understanding of the state of mind in which I have lived and worked” (p. 155). The publication was shepherded through the press by the formidable magazine editor Marie Mattingly Meloney (1878–1943), who had been granted a rare interview with the famously reticent Marie Curie in her Parisian laboratory in 1920. Upon discovering that Curie was struggling to raise the funds to purchase the gram of radium she required for further research, Meloney organised a nationwide campaign which succeeded in raising the required sum. During this period Meloney arranged for Macmillan to publish this biography, securing Curie a source of royalty income for the following years, and also provided the introduction. Ogilvie, Marilyn, & Joy Harvey (eds.), Dictionary of Women in Science , Routledge, 2000, p. 316. £6,000 [130630]
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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