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USE OF RADIUM IN MEDICINE BECLERE 211 



having a special endowment. Its purpose is to promote and develop 

 . by scientific researches of all kinds on radioactive bodies and their 

 emitted radiations, their application, principally in medicine, but 

 more especially in the treatment of cancer. Its ambition is to dis- 

 cover new scientific properties and new methods of treatment for 

 broadening the scope of Curie-therapy. 



Already the Curie Foundation has an offshoot in Canada in the 

 Radium Institute founded at the University of Montreal by the gov- 

 ernment of the Province of Quebec. This forges a new bond of 

 affection in addition to those which already united that country 

 with France. There is an even better evidence of this bond in the 

 presence of Professor Gendreau, the Canadian director of this 

 distant offspring, at the ceremonies for the twenty-fifth anniversary 

 of the discovery of radium. It is at the Radium Institute in Paris, 

 in the medical service connected with the Curie Foundation, the first 

 in France of the institutions for the treatment of cancer, that Curie- 

 therapy has recently shown its most important progress. This 

 organization, including a dispensary already a year in service and 

 officially inaugurated this morning by the Minister of Health, is 

 from a practical point of view very far from being the equal of some 

 analogous institutions of other countries. It possesses neither their 

 wealth of radium nor their magnificent buildings. Its beds, located 

 at the Pasteur Hospital and the Antoine Chantin medical-surgical 

 clinic, are scattered and too small in number. It needs a special 

 hospital, but, as an independent observer has the right to declare, 

 nowhere can be found greater enthusiasm, ardor, and devotion to 

 science or a more disinterested and humanitarian spirit than that 

 which, as exemplified by their chiefs, animates all those associated 

 in the work. 



To Madame Curie. 



Madame: The discovery of radioactivity and radium, while open- 

 ing a new world to science, also brings a new domain for the treat- 

 ment of diseases. When the Academy of Medicine unanimously 

 elected you to its membership without any request from you, it but 

 performed a duty in justice and in gratitude. It has the right to be 

 proud of the glorious name of the first woman elected to its mem- 

 bership. 



Though all minds may not be apt to understand the greatness and 

 beauty of your conquest in the world of science, what heart is not 

 moved with admiration and recognition before the new force with 

 which you have enriched the possibility of lightening human misery, 

 of triumphing for a while over suffering, disease, and death ? 



Wherefore your name and that of Pierre Curie will live forever 

 with all mankind among those of its benefactors. 



