It would not be an unfair thing to say that if it were not for the Polish born – French educated Marie Curie our modern world of medicine would be severely limited. As a woman of medicine and Science Curie nee Skłodowska was to lay down the foundations for much of what we take for granted today when it comes to medical understanding and research. All fields of treatment have benefited from her work by nuclear medicine to sexual health. It’s one of the reasons we now have London Chlamydia Testing kits and the like.
Curie nee Skłodowska’s contribution is from her work with radioactive isotopes . She was able to establish the use of the X-Ray as a means of examining a patient’s internal organs. For the first time the Doctor could see or get an idea as to what was causing an ailment without having to use dangerous surgery especially as this was in the years before antibiotics had been discovered and developed.
Her second is the research into the use of radiotherapy to treat cancers and other issues. Ironically this was also the cause of her demise as the dangerous work working with radiation ( a phrase she created) caused acute radiation poisoning.