In Memory of Jack French
A reader informed me last week that long time reader and occasional contributor of guest posts Jack French recently died after a short illness.
One of the best parts of writing this blog is getting acquainted with readers. You send me emails commenting on posts, pointing out typos,* recommending books, and sharing ideas. We end up in conversation over time. Sometimes I even get to meet you in real life.
Jack French took things one step further. He didn’t just share stories and links to interesting stuff. He wrote occasional guest posts on topics that were very much on point for the blog.
Here are links to his posts over the last few years:
The Lady Who Invented Monopoly
In Which a History in the Margin’s Reader Recommends a Book
Two WASP Pilots Show the Men How It’s Done
Thank you for the stories, Jack. I will miss you.
*Which I go back and fix, because people find blogs long after the fact.
Nansen Passports
Passports, visas, residence and work permits, and journalists’ overseas accreditations have been a recurring thread in my work for the last few years*—the inevitable result of writing about an American journalist who spent much of her life in Europe. Working her way through bureaucratic red tape to be sure she had the correct permissions to go where she she needed to be was a fact of life for Sigrid Schultz. She took it seriously, even when the home office back in Chicago thought she was being fussy, because she knew border officials in Europe took proper documentation seriously.
In the years between the two world war, when Schultz was active, official identity documents were important. Millions of people were left stateless by a combination of the changes that reshaped the map of Europe, the revolutions and subsequent civil war in Russia, the Armenian genocide in the former Ottoman Empire and the constant small-scale wars between the new states created by the peacemakers in Versailles. Without valid passports, homeless refugees found it almost impossible to find asylum in countries that were already in economic distress due first to the ravages of war and later to the great depression.
A Norwegian polar explorer turned diplomat named Fridtjof Nansen had successfully organized the repatriation of prisoners of war after World War I. In 1921, the League of Nations named him head of the Office of the High commissioner for Refugees, with a mandate to repatriate the refugees or arrange for them to be distributed between other countries. It soon became clear the many of the refugees couldn’t or wouldn’t return to the countries they had left.
His budget did not allow him to give direct aid to refugees. Instead he proposed a solution that became known as the Nansen passport—a certificate issued by the country in which the homeless had taken refugee that served as both a valid form of identification and a travel permit. The passport did not grant its holders citizenship, but it allowed them them to cross borders in search of work and family members and protected them from deportation.* It was ultimately recognized by 52 countries.
Roughly 450,000 refugees, most of them Russian and Armenian, carried Nansen passports between between 1922 and 1942.
*It also provided governments with a tool for tracking refugees. Identity documents always have a dark side.
And Speaking of X-rays….
Several of you responded to my recent post on the subject with interesting information about the early use of x-rays.*
This story caught my imagination for several reasons that will be obvious to those of you who are regular visitors here on the Margins:
Madame Curie in a mobile x-ray unit ca. 1915
When World War I broke out in 1914, Marie Curie (already a two-time Nobel Prize winner) relocated her precious supply of radium (one small ounce) from Paris to Bordeaux. Then she considered how she could best serve her adopted country in wartime.
Doctors in major cities were already using x-rays to view broken bones and locate foreign substances in the human body. Combatant nations quickly established radiology units in rear-area hospitals, but were slower to recognize the importance of x-ray units near the frontline, where a fast, accurate assessment of a wound allowed for quicker and more precise surgery, and better recovery rates.
Recognizing that the available services were inadequate, Curie leveraged her reputation to secure an appointment as the head of the radiology auxiliary to the Military Health Service. Then she convinced wealthy acquaintances to donate money and cars, automobile shops to refit the cars as vans, and manufacturers to provide x-ray equipment. She learned to drive a car and gave herself a quick education in anatomy, x-ray operation, and automobile repair.
By late October, 1914, the first 20 mobile radiology units, which French soldiers dubbed petites Curies,** were ready, manned (and in many cases womanned) by a team made up of a doctor, an x-ray technician and a driver. Madame Curie herself, with her seventeen-year-old daughter Irene as her assistant, drove one of the units to the battlefield.
By the end of the war, France had more than 500 stationary x-ray stations and some 300 mobile units, with 800 male technicians and 150 women trained by Madame Curie and Irene in an intensive six- to eight-week course at the Radium Institute in Paris.
At war’s end, the French government gave Irene a medal for her war work, but did not officially recognize Madame Curie’s role in saving countless soldiers’ lives.
*For more information on the use of x-rays in shoe stores: When X-Rays Were All the Rage, A Trip to the Shoe Store was Dangerously Illuminating
**I am reminded of another woman’s military medical innovation: Isabella of Castile created mobile field hospitals, known as the Queen’s Hospitals.
With hat tips to Paul and Karin for the link and the story.