MADAME CURIE AND HER DAUGHTER IN THEIR LABORATORY Radium emits a wave of particles moving with great velocity; certain of them bear a positive charge and form alpha-rays, others more minute bear a negative charge and form beta-rays. These two groups are influenced in their course by the action of a magnet. A third group is constituted by rays insensible to the action of a magnet, known now to be a radiation similar to light and to X-rays. We were particularly glad to observe that our concentrated radium products were all spontaneously luminous. The Congress of 1900 gave us an opportunity of demonstrating the new radio-active substances to foreign scientists at first hand. Our discoveries formed one of the main points on which the interest of the Congress was focussed. We were at that time completely absorbed by the new field which our unexpected discovery had opened up to us. In spite of the adverse conditions under which we were working, we were very happy. We passed day after day in the laboratory, taking our simple meals there student-fashion. In our bare shed a great sense of well-being reigned; sometimes, while supervising some operation, we would walk to and fro, talking over our work, present and future; if we were cold, a cup of hot tea by the stove would cheer us. We lived in a unique state of preoccupation, as though in a dream. We used to come back in the evening after dinner to see that all was well in our domain. On tables and shelves were the precious products for which we had no home; on all sides you could distinguish their faintly luminous outlines, and these glimmerings, which seemed suspended in the darkness, never failed to fill us with emotion and delight. Nominally, Pierre Curie had no claim on the services of the school employees. However, the laboratory assistant who had been at his disposal for his experimental work when he wasin charge, still continued to help him in his spare time. This good man, whose name was Petit, was really fond of us; we were helped in many ways by his good-will and the interest he took in our work. Thus the work on radio-activity began in solitude. But in view of the magnitude of the task, the necessity for help became more and more apparent. In 1898, one of the heads of the school, G. Bémont, collaborated with us for a time. In 1900, Pierre Curie became connected with a young chemist, André Debierne, an assistant of Friedel, who thought a great deal of him. On the proposal of Pierre Curie, Debierne willingly agreed to undertake work on radio-activity; he particularly undertook research work on a new radio-element, the existence of which was suspected in the group of iron and rare earths. He discovered this element, which is named actinium. Although he was working in the physico-chemistry laboratory of the Sorbonne directed by Jean Perrin, he came to see us frequently in our shed, and soon became a very close friend of ours, of Dr. Curie, and later of our children. About the same time Georges Sagnac, a young “It is wiser to put up a fence at the top of a precipice than to maintain an ambulance at the bottom. " Motto of the Royal New Zealand Society for the Pioneers Pioneering, whether it be in the wilds of Africa or in the slums of London, requires vision, courage and tenacity of purpose, and the good wishes of all health workers will go with the seventeen students of the International Public Health Nursing Course (organized by the League of Red Cross Societies and held at Bedford College, London) who have this year completed their term of study. They have shown vision in realizing the possibilities of public health nursing and in devoting themselves to its development in their several countries; they have shown courage in giving up much that was dear to them at home, in going abroad to study in a foreign country, to grapple with the difficulties of a foreign language and foreign customs. They have yet to show that tenacity of purpose which alone will carry them through the doubts, difficulties and disillusionment which they are certain to meet with on their return to their own countries, but no one doubts that they possess such a quality. They are not the first students to finish the course. Three other yearly courses have already been completed and forty-eight graduates have returned to their respective countries, where they are giving magnificent proof of the pioneer spirit within them. A fifth course began last September, and twenty students are now enrolled from the following countries: Czecho Slovakia, Germany, Paraguay, Bulgaria, Norway, Latvia, Greece, Serbia, Belgium, Switzerland, Great Britain, New Zealand, Austria, Holland, Turkey and Siam. The seventeen latest graduates of the International Course were presented with their certificates by Sir Wilmot Herringham, Chairman of the General Nursing Council of England and Wales, at a ceremony held at Bedford College, London, on July 4th. Their names are: Ottilie Coreth (Austria); Pepina Wolfbauer (Austria); Julia Molnarova (Czecho Slovakia); Amalia Bunch (Denmark); Hilda Hamburger (Esthonia); Sigrid Larsson (Finland); Madeleine Ahnne (France); Irene Charley (Great Britain); Katherine d'Osztoics (Hungary); Maria de Steller (Hungary); Serafima Dreikant (Latvia); Helena ter Meulen (Netherlands); Leopoldine van Hogendorp (Netherlands); Elise Moe (Norway); Leontine Adami (Uruguay); and Nan Dorsey (United States). A special certificate was awarded to Rosa Hellich (Serbia) on having completed a special course of study. To get a clear idea of the scope of the course, it is necessary to turn back to the year 1920. After the war the Red Cross Societies, having decided to turn their attention to peacetime health problems, such as child welfare, the prevention of tuberculosis and the campaign against infectious diseases, realized that the available nurses, trained only in bedside care of the sick, were not sufficient. The Red Cross needed also public health nurses trained in preventive work. In some countries schools of public health nursing already existed, but in others, where the art of nursing was not so highly developed, there were few facilities for preparing nurses for their new task. The League of Red Cross Societies stepped into the breach and organized an international course in Public Health Nursing. The aim of this course is not only to prepare nurses to assist in the development of public health work in their own countries, but also to seek out in each country nurses who have already received the best training their country can give them and to offer them a year's intensive study of public health and social problems and methods making them better able to organize, administer, supervise and teach other nurses upon their return. After careful consideration of where the course should be held, the choice fell on London, which offered unique opportunities both with regard to the THE GROUNDS AT BEDFORD COLLEGE Public Health Services and the high development of nursing. In September 1920, the first course opened at King's College for Women; for reasons of practical convenience it was transferred, at the end of the year, to Bedford College for Women, where it now continues. The organization of an international public health nursing course presented many difficulties. From the nursing point of view the countries of the world might be divided roughly into three groups: (a) countries with welltrained hospital nurses and a growing system of public health nurses' training; (b) those with an adequate system of hospital training but with little or no training for public health nursing; and (c) those which have as yet no organized facilities for the training either of hospital nurses or of public health nurses. The problems which confront students from these three different groups when they return to take up their work in their own country are quite different, and the standards with which they are familiar when they enter the courses are also different. The principle has accordingly been adopted of providing the maximum of individual tuition for each student. For those students who are able to undertake advanced work, the College offers facilities for studies in education, psychology, economics and sociology. The course as arranged makes it possible for a well-educated and capable woman who has organizing ability and is really interested in the development of nursing, but who lacks the technical training she would certainly have sought had nursing facilities existed in her country, to return from London sufficiently well equipped to constitute a staunch advocate and a potential organizer of general nursing as well as of public health nursing work in her country. Practical work is arranged for each student with reference to her past experience and future work. It includes attendance at Child Welfare Centres, Day Nurseries, Hospitals and Tuberculosis Dispensaries, experience with District Nursing Associations and in School Hygiene work, and visits to all kinds of training schools and public health institutions. Visits are also paid to several of the larger cities (Edinburgh, Bradford, Bristol) to give the students some insight into the working of public health services. Informal weekly lectures are also given to the students by prominent nursing and health experts from many different countries. During one of the College vacation periods the League arranges for the students to visit Paris to study the organization of the French public health services. Visits are then paid to the Pasteur Institute, the Léon Bourgeois Tuberculosis Dispensary, the Crèche and the Hopital Laennec for babies with tuberculous mothers, the Salpêtrière Hospital, the Ecole de Puériculture and other interesting institutions. Through the courtesy of the Association d'Hygiène Sociale de l'Aisne, the students also spend some time studying the public health nursing activities of the Association in the devastated areas. British Ministry of Health and the Board of Education have both given their approval The to the course, and nursing and social organizations in London and Paris have co-operated admirably in giving the students every facility for study. The expenses are usually borne by the National Red Cross Society or the Government sending the student, but a limited number of scholarships are offered by associations interested in encouraging higher nursing education and by the League of Red Cross Societies, and each year an increasing number of nurses are finding it possible to pay their own expenses. Up to the present the students have lived together in a boarding house, but have had noh me of their own. Now, however, steps are being taken to provide them with an International Nurses' Home, where they may live during their year of study. Generous gifts from the Red Cross Societies of CzechoSlovakia, the United States, Great Britain, Holland and Greece towards the establishment of this home were announced at the League's General Council in Paris last May, and steps are already being taken to secure a building. Besides providing living quarters for the international students, it is hoped that the home and club may become an international centre for all nurses from foreign countries working or studying in London; all the usual club facilities will be provided, including a library, restaurant and lecture hall. The importance of this step can hardly be exaggerated, for the great value of the course lies in the opportunity it gives for international intercourse and exchange of thought among nurses, not only during their work but also in their hours of recreation. It was not possible to have the club ready for the new course opening in September, but every effort is being made to open it next year. What happens to the students when they return to their own countries ? Each Red Cross Society sending a candidate to the course guarantees that on her return she shall be given every facility for stimulating nursing development and raising the nursing standard. Enquiry into the present occupations of old "Internationals", as the students like to call themselves, shows that this guarantee has been fully endorsed. Of graduates of the first course one is promoting health work among children in Canada as Director of the Junior Red Cross, another is directing the nursing service in tuberculosis dispensaries in Bucarest, another is Head of the Visiting Nurses' Association in Brussels, while a fourth is developing hospital nursing in Peru. Students of the later courses are doing equally valuable pioneer work ir varied capacities: directing a School for Nurse in Serbia, supervising child-welfare centres in Austria, developing public health work in Siam, organizing public health nursing in Esthonia and Finland, or working among school children in Japan. Naturally all is not smooth sailing and students sometimes have difficulties to overcome before they can get their work established on satisfactory lines. They have also to adapt the teaching they receive in London to the needs of their respective fields. This necessity for adapting methods is happily expressed in a letter received from a student now working in Finland : "When we try, in our country, to apply what we have learned abroad, we find that we cannot just copy but have to think out every bit of our work, and that is what makes it so interesting. We have to eliminate a great deal and build up new methods in order to get results best suited to the place we work in and the people we want to serve. But we keep the ideas and the ideals we found in BEDFORD COLLEGE, LONDON |