Mommy!
Apr 13, 2017
Putting Marie into a post-miscarriage depression last episode prompted me to explore traumatic events of her childhood. All the events in this episode are factual. Her mother did contract tuberculosis, when Marie was about 3. She was sent to "healthful climates" by doctors, and 10-year-old Zosia did serve as her nurse. Upon returning, she was so deathly ill that Marie was not allowed to hug her.
HISTORIC NOTE #1: Only in the first panel did I play loose with the facts. The woman off-camera is the wife of Eugène-Anatole Demarçay, the French chemist who did the spectroscopic work for the Curies. However, I could not determine if he actually had a wife or child. He may have been a lifelong bachelor. Also, in reality, the Curies would take specimens to Demarçay's lab to be "spectroscoped"--in my reality, Eugene is helping Pierre set up his own spectroscope at home.
(In case you don't know, a spectroscope is what is used to detect the presence of a particular element, as each element has a unique spectrum line--a frequency of visible light that is emitted whenever the element is incandescent. This is what was used to verify the discovery of Marie's new elements. It is also how we know what elements are in, for example, a nebula in space.)
NOTE #2: Tuberculosis was once one of the top 3 causes of death. It's a highly infectious viral disease that primarily affects the respiratory system, resulting in hacking, bloody coughs. It was often called "consumption" because of the extreme weight loss that resulted. Around 1900, it was responsible for 1 of 6 deaths in France. It still kills 1.5 million every year.
NOTE #3: The wildflower on "page 1" is an anemone, believed to be tears of Aphrodite after her lover Adonis was killed.
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