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The visual diplomacy of cancer treatments: the mediatic legacy of the Curies in the early transnational fight against cancer
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 April 2023
Abstract
This paper analyses the role played by members of the Curie family in the visual diplomacy of cancer treatments. This relationship started in 1921, when Marie Curie travelled to the US, accompanied by her two daughters, Ève and Irène, to receive a gram of radium at the White House from President Warren Harding. In the years that followed, Ève Curie, as the biographer and natural heir of radium discoverers Marie and Pierre Curie, continued to contribute to the visual diplomacy of cancer campaigning. Two events will be analysed through an interdisciplinary lens, merging history of science and visual-diplomacy studies, to show how the legacy of the Curies played out in the international consolidation of pre-war transnational alliances in the fight against cancer. One involves the picture of the chargé d'affaires of the France Republic, Jules Henry, receiving the biography authored by Ève, Madame Curie, at the French embassy in Washington. The other concerns the photograph of Ève visiting the Portuguese Oncology Institute (IPO) in 1940, which was immediately reproduced in the Institute's bulletin in order to raise awareness of cancer prevention strategies, and also captured in film as a propaganda tool for the Estado Novo regime (1933–74).
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- The British Journal for the History of Science , Volume 56 , Special Issue 2: Science, Technology and Visual Diplomacy , June 2023 , pp. 167 - 183
- Copyright
- Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of British Society for the History of Science
References
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52 Aligning with historian Roger Griffin's concept of ‘rooted modernism’, merging fascism's obsession with tradition with its willingness to use and display modernist visual culture, as well as modern forms of science and technology. Griffin, Roger, ‘Building the visible immortality of the nation: the centrality of “rooted modernism” to the third Reich's architectural new order’, Fascism (2018) 7, pp. 9–44CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
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56 Manifesto da Semana Internacional de Luta contra o Cancro de 1938 da União Internacional de Luta Contra o Cancro, enviado pelo Presidente da Comissão Directora do Instituto Português de Oncologia ao Ministério da Educação Nacional, Arquivo da Direcção Geral dos Serviços de Espectáculos 1929–1974, Lisbon, Arquivo Nacional da Torre do Tombo (ANTT).
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59 Romance of Radium, retrieved from www.youtube.com/watch?v=724Do_WYGsA, (accessed 5 March 2021).
60 From the early 1930s to the 1950s, Portuguese (film) production companies were in contact with Hollywood producers and distributors, such as Metro–Goldwyn–Mayer, Paramount and Fox, which progressively established their offices in Portugal. See Metro–Goldwyn–Mayer (1928–62), Paramount (1928–62), Fox (1954–62), lists of films (1928–80), all in Arquivo da Direcção Geral dos Serviços de Espectáculos (1929–74), ANTT. An analysis of the Portuguese film magazine Cinéfilo (1928–39) shows that American film culture was widely present in Portugal, with a special focus on Hollywood. Likewise, US films were also used in an educational context in Portugal, under the direction and support of the Estado Novo's Ministry of National Education: Mocidade Portuguesa (1937–68) and Junta Nacional de Educação (1937–68), Correspondência (1929–69), Arquivo da Direcção Geral dos Serviços de Espectáculos (1929–74), ANTT.
61 ‘Vênus Loira’, Cinéfilo, 23 September 1933, p. 8.
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70 Ève arrived in Lisbon on board the SudExpress train on 8 January 1940 (‘Eva Curie’, Diário de Lisboa, 8 January 1940); the day after, she visited the IPO and then headed to New York City on the liner Vulcania on 10 January 1940 (‘Eve Curie outlines French wives’ job’, New York Times, 19 January 1940). On the use of media to advertise Portugal's stance see Sampaio, Sofia, ‘Jornal Português: Revista Mensal de Actualidades 1938–1951’, Análise Social (2016) 219 LI (2), pp. 467–72Google Scholar; Lisboa, Ricardo Vieira, ‘A representação do cinema no Jornal Português: da capital das vedetas à agenda de António Lopes Ribeiro’, Aniki (2016) 3(2), pp. 280–302Google Scholar.
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