"If you had the whole world to choose from," I asked impulsively, "what would you take?" It was a silly question, perhaps, but as it happened, a fateful one.
"You ought to have everything in the world you need to go on with your work," I said. "Some one must undertake this."
"Who will?" she asked rather hopelessly.
"The women of America," I promised—and then I rose to go.
That week I learned that the market price of a gramme of radium was one hundred thousand dollars. I also learned that Madame Curie's laboratory, although practically a new building, was without sufficient equipment; that the radium held there was used at that time only for extracting emanations for hospital use in cancer treatment.
I saw Madame Curie at the Institute again and then in her own home—a small apartment in the Ile St. Louis, where she lived with her two daughters. It was a happy, busy little family. They had no protest against life except to regret that lack of equipment interfered with the important research work Madame Curie and her daughter, Irene, should have been doing.
It was my hope when I arrived in New York, a few weeks afterwards, to find ten women to subscribe ten thousand dollars each for the purchase of a gramme of radium, and in this way to enable Madame Curie to go on with her work, without the publicity of a general campaign. That hope was soon dashed. I found one or two such women, but not ten.
There were not ten to buy that gramme of radium but there were a hundred thousand women and a group of men to help, who determined the money must be raised.
My first direct and substantial support came from Mrs. William Vaughn Moody, widow of the American poet and playwright.
When we found it would be necessary to launch a national campaign, Mrs. Robert G. Mead, a doctor's daughter, and one who had been a standby in cancer prevention work, became secretary, and Mrs. Nicholas F. Brady an executive member of the committee. Behind these women stood a group of scientific men, who knew what radium had meant to humanity, among them Dr. Robert Abbe, the first American surgeon to use radium, and Dr. Francis Carter Wood.