Marcel Junod - Childhood and Education

Childhood and Education

Marcel Junod was born in Neuchâtel, Switzerland as the fifth of seven children, to Richard Samuel Junod (1868–1919) and Jeanne Marguerite Bonnet (1866–1952). His father was a pastor for the Independent Protestant Church of Neuchâtel, first working in mining villages in Belgium and later in poor communities near Neuchâtel and La Chaux-de-Fonds in Switzerland; the latter being where Junod spent most of his childhood. After the death of his father, his family returned to his mother's home of Geneva. A legal rule of the time allowed Junod and his two younger sisters to obtain Genevan citizenship. In order to earn a living, his mother and aunt opened a boarding house.

Junod completed his initial education in 1923 with a baccalaureate diploma from Geneva's Collège Calvin, the same school that Red Cross founder Henry Dunant had attended. As a student, he volunteered in charity work and directed the Relief Movement for Russian Children in Geneva. Due to generous financial support from his uncle Henri-Alexandre Junod he was able to follow his aspirations and study medicine in Geneva and Strasbourg, obtaining his MD in 1929. He opted for special training in the field of surgery and interned at hospitals in Geneva and Mulhouse, France (1931–1935). He completed his training in Mulhouse in 1935, and began work as the head of the Mulhouse hospital's surgical clinic.

Read more about this topic:  Marcel Junod

Famous quotes containing the words childhood and, childhood and/or education:

    Having a child is the great divide between one’s own childhood and adulthood. All at once someone is totally dependent upon you. You are no longer the child of your mother but the mother of your child. Instead of being taken care of, you are responsible for taking care of someone else.
    Elaine Heffner (20th century)

    I long for scenes where man has never trod A place where woman never smiled or wept There to abide with my Creator God And sleep as I in childhood sweetly slept, Untroubling and untroubled where I lie The grass below, above, the vaulted sky.
    John Clare (1793–1864)

    The principle goal of education in the schools should be creating men and women who are capable of doing new things, not simply repeating what other generations have done; men and women who are creative, inventive and discoverers, who can be critical and verify, and not accept, everything they are offered.
    Jean Piaget (1896–1980)