[Footnote 32: In his work on _L'Evolution de la Matiere_, M. Gustave
Le Bon recalls that in 1897 he published several notes in the Academie
des Sciences, in which he asserted that the properties of uranium were
only a particular case of a very general law, and that the radiations
emitted did not polarize, and were akin by their properties to the X
rays.]
It was natural to ask one's self if the property discovered in salts
of uranium was peculiar to this body, or if it were not, to a more or
less degree, a general property of matter. Madame Curie and M.
Schmidt, independently of each other, made systematic researches in
order to solve the question; various compounds of nearly all the
simple bodies at present known were thus passed in review, and it was
established that radioactivity was particularly perceptible in the
compounds of uranium and thorium, and that it was an atomic property
linked to the matter endowed with it, and following it in all its
combinations. In the course of her researches Madame Curie observed
that certain pitchblendes (oxide of uranium ore, containing also
barium, bismuth, etc.
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