Major Margaret Peters: The Dawn of Atomic Medicine
After graduating from Wilson in 1931, Margaret Peters completed a nursing program at the Columbia University Presbyterian Hospital and later trained for the Army Nurse Corps during WWII. She was first stationed in England and then served in a field hospital in France for three years.
After the war, she worked at Walter Reed Hospital in Washington DC, where she joined a group of male scientists searching for possible uses of radioactive substances in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. Her role was to develop nursing techniques to be employed by army nurses as the use of radioactive substances increased in medicine.
An article about the use of “Atomic” medicine appeared in many newspapers in 1952 featuring Peters under the headline:
Atomic Cocktail Nothing to Fear, Army Nurse Says
“If your doctor prescribes an atomic cocktail, go ahead and take it. That’s the message of Maj. Margaret Peters, US Army Nurse Corps, whose job is to take the fear out of giving and receiving radioactive treatment. She goes from the laboratory to the lecture platform explaining to medical and lay groups the nursing care and approach to patients who are being treated with one of the new radioactive elements.
“Maj. Peters, who joined the Army in 1942, was hand-picked to do the public relations job for radioactive treatment. In the biophysics laboratory at the Army Medical Service Graduate School, she works out new nursing techniques and then teaches them to other nurses.
“A nurse must know how to explain the treatment so patients and their families are reassured. Many patients are afraid they will be a risk to their families when discharged from the hospital. Maj. Peters told me one woman even refused treatment because she felt it might be dangerous to touch her baby afterwards.
“Working with research doctors at the school, Maj. Peters has helped figure out safe exposure limits for medical personnel. “I have to convince the nurses they don’t have to handle their patients with tongs or wear lead aprons,” she joked.
“Precautions are necessary, however, Maj. Peters emphasizes. In her own lab she wears a badge of dental film pinned to her white coat. When enough radioactivity is present the film becomes blackened just as it would by X-rays. She also wears a dose meter, which measures how much radioactivity she is exposed to.
“Major Peters was the only service-woman and the only nurse to observe the recent atomic experiments at Frenchman’s Flats, Nevada.”