His medical career remained always a modest one, but it revealed remarkable qualities of devotion and disinterestedness. At the time of the Revolution of 1848, when he was still a student, the Government of the Republic conferred on him a medal, "for his honorable and courageous conduct" in serving the wounded. He himself had been struck, on February 24th, by a ball which shattered a part of his jaw. A little later, during a cholera epidemic, he installed himself, in order that he might look after the sick, in a quarter of Paris deserted by physicians. During the Commune he established a hospital in his apartment (rue de la Visitation) near which there was a barricade, and there he cared for the wounded. Through this act of civism and because of his advanced convictions he lost a part of his _bourgeois_ patronage. At this time he accepted the position of medical inspector of the organization for the protection of young children. The duties of this post permitted him to live in the suburbs of Paris where health conditions for himself and his family were much better than those of the city. Doctor Curie had very pronounced political convictions. Temperamentally an idealist, he had embraced with ardor that republican doctrine which inspired the revolutionaries of 1848. He was united in friendship with Henri Brisson and the men of his group. Like them, a free thinker and an anticlerical, he did not have his sons baptized, nor did he have them practice any form of religion. Pierre's mother, Claire Depouilly, was the daughter of a prominent manufacturer of Puteaux, near Paris. Her father and brothers distinguished themselves through their numerous inventions connected with the making of dyes and special tissues. The family, which was of Savoy, was caught in the business catastrophe caused by the Revolution of 1848, and ruined. And these reverses of fortune, added to those which Doctor Curie had experienced during his career, meant that he and his family lived always in comparatively straightened circumstances, with the difficulties of existence often renewed. Even though raised for a life of ease, Pierre's mother accepted with tranquil courage the precarious conditions which life brought her, and gave proof of an extreme devotion as she made life easier for her husband and children by her activity and her good will.