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 →
Category: Beyond Florence
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 →
Rediscovering (and Redefining) Clara Barton’s Story
The building was due to be demolished until a carpenter checked the attic. Among old socks and newspapers was a sign that read “Missing Soldiers Office, 3rd Story, Room 9, Miss. Clara Barton.” What the carpenter, Richard Lyons, had discovered was the remains of Clara Barton’s Washington, DC residence, where she had lived during and… 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 →
Garbage Bags and Tomato Cans: The History of Nurses Making Basic Equipment Out of Trash
In spring 2020, images of nurses treating patients while wearing garbage bags instead of standard disposable gowns symbolized both the bravery of frontline clinicians and a shocking lack of preparation for the emerging COVID-19 pandemic. This clever use of a trash bag as well as other everyday items and actual trash to create ad-hoc personal… Read more →
Nursing Justice: Filipino Immigrant Nurse Activism in the United States
When you think about trailblazing women in American nursing history, do Filipino nurses come to mind? Probably not. But they should. The pioneering cancer prevention work of Ines Cayaban in the 1940s, the organizing work of Esther Hipol Simpson to defend two immigrant nurses wrongfully accused of murder in the 1970s, and the current leadership… Read more →
Nursing for Generations: Kiowa Peoplehood in the Work of Laura Pedrick
When smallpox erupted across the Kiowa, Comanche, and Apache Reservation in 1900, local people began to panic. Experienced Kiowa and Comanche healers knew smallpox as a Western disease that usually required Western treatment. Rocky plains made difficult passage for the horse-drawn buggies that Charles Hume and Harry Wheeler, the reservation’s two government physicians, used to… Read more →
Susie Walking Bear Yellowtail and Histories of Native American Nursing
I first encountered Susie Yellowtail (Crow) in a July 1934 letter in which a physician on her reservation condemned her for making “selfish” requests on health workers’ time and resources.1 The physician was angry that Yellowtail refused to accept hospital services for the birth of her child, and he made it clear that the Crow… Read more →
The Racist Lady with the Lamp
Nursing historiography is centered on whiteness. Even worse, nursing history revolves largely around a single white nurse: Florence Nightingale. This, unfortunately, doesn’t mean nurses understand who Nightingale was. There are nurse historians doing incredible and diverse work, but in general, nursing, both as a profession and as an academic discipline, promotes a view of Nightingale… Read more →