Many historians, including myself, have told the story of New York City’s Sea View Hospital, a tuberculosis sanatorium that operated from 1913 to 1961. But only now, with the publication of Maria Smilios’s new book, The Black Angels: The Untold Story of the Nurses Who Helped Cure Tuberculosis, is a crucial part of Sea View’s… Read more →
Tag: Nursing
Singing and Dancing Fetuses: Art, Life, and Abortion at “The Appointment”
My earliest days in healthcare were at abortion clinics. First as a counselor and then as a nurse, I cared for hundreds of patients seeking abortion care. At clinics, I learned how to perform ultrasounds with the screen angled away from my patient; I learned how to tell which patients would be relieved in the… Read more →
“Not being a man, I wanted to do the next best thing”: Female Gentlemen and the First World War
Vera Brittain worked as a voluntary nurse in France and Malta during the First World War. After the armistice, she went back to university, but by 1920 she wrote that the memories of the war “and its extraordinary aftermath had taken full possession of my warped and floundering mind.”[1] She was, she exclaimed, “Nothing but… Read more →
Our Work is Not Complete Yet: The Tuberculosis Nurse Training Program at Virginia’s Piedmont Sanatorium
In May 1940, the Piedmont Sanatorium in Burkeville, Virginia, graduated eight African American nurses with advanced training in tuberculosis care. A “Class History” and “Class Prophecy” presented at the commencement ceremony articulated the value of educational attainment, individual determination, and collegial support. As discussed in the Nursing Clio series, Beyond Florence, the history of nursing… Read more →
The School of Nursing at Starozakonnych Hospital in Interwar Warsaw: How Amelia Greenwald and Sabina Schindlerówna Challenged Antisemitism in the Nursing Profession
In the spring of 1923, Amelia Greenwald arrived in Warsaw, Poland, to undertake an urgent task. A nurse from the United States, she was to establish a school of nursing for young Jewish women at the Starozakonnych Hospital.[1] The project was funded by the Joint Distribution Committee, an organization founded during the Great War to… Read more →
An Emancipatory Vocation: Nursing in Quebec, 1912–1974
Established in 1967, the first Royal Commission on the Status of Women, also known as “the Bird Commission,” emerged following pressure from women’s groups calling for an inquiry into the status of women in Canada. The commission and its 1970 Report of the Royal Commission on the Status of Women in Canada was a major step for… Read more →
Moving Beyond Florence: Why We Need to Decolonize Nursing History
When I suggested the “Beyond Florence” series to the team at Nursing Clio, I didn’t set out to “cancel” Florence Nightingale. In my introductory essay, I described the environment that gave rise to my concerns about how nursing history was being represented in both the year of COVID-19 and the International Year of the Nurse… Read more →
They Are More Than Research Subjects: Recognizing the Accomplishments of Black Canadian Nurses
Moving Beyond Borders: A History of Black Canadian and Caribbean Women in the Diaspora is based on extensive interviews I conducted with 35 nurses. Through those interviews, I examine how Black Canadian-born and Caribbean nurses made meaning of their occupational experiences, communities, and relationships to the Canadian nation. The experiences of these nurses are significant… Read more →
African Americans, Slavery, and Nursing in the US South
In 2016, a statue of Jamaican-born nurse and businesswoman Mary Seacole was erected outside St Thomas’ Hospital in London. Seacole’s contribution to the war effort in the Crimea and to British life is well-known. Yet, the tribute – the first statue of a named Black woman in the UK – gathered vocal opposition from The… Read more →
Black Before Florence: Black Nurses, Enslaved Labor, and the British Royal Navy, 1790–1820
Throughout the eighteenth century, the British Royal Navy embarked on a scheme of hospital construction in the Atlantic World. The largest hospitals were in the British Isles, but those that dealt with the highest mortality were in the Greater Caribbean. Most naval medical history focuses on male medical officers, while most nursing history examines the… Read more →