Rewriting Nursing History

Celia Davies

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English

Routledge
01 July 2025

European history; Social & cultural history; Nursing

Series: Routledge Revivals

Originally published in 1980, this book written by nurses, historians and sociologists, challenges conventional forms of nursing history. Rather than a chronology of events or a focus on great men or women as instigators of change, the contributions address specific questions to historical data, posing and evaluating contrasting interpretations. They set out quite deliberately to ask new questions and to find new research materials. Several of the chapters refer to the nursing reforms in the hospitals in the nineteenth century and in doing so they raise new questions about the character of those reforms and the way in which they still affected us at the time.

There is a focus on ‘professional matters’ such as work organisation and training and a discussion of nursing as ‘women’s work’. Nursing itself, it is argued, is not a homogenous profession, as material on early psychiatric nursing demonstrates.

In short, a plurality of issues that embrace social history, health professionalism, feminist questions and the history of labour and welfare, are shown to be relevant to a richer and more challenging history of nursing.

Edited by: Celia Davies
Imprint: Routledge
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 216mm, Width: 138mm,
ISBN: 9781041072027
ISBN 10: 1041072023
Series: Routledge Revivals
Pages: 228
Publication Date: 01 July 2025
Audience: College/higher education , College/higher education , Adult education , Primary , Primary
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Preface. 1. Introduction: The Contemporary Challenge in Nursing History Celia Davies 2. Nurse Recruitment to Four Provincial Hospitals 1881–1921 Christopher Maggs 3. From Sarah Gamp to Florence Nightingale: A Critical Study of Hospital Nursing Systems from 1840 to 1897 Katherine Williams 4. The Administration of Poverty and the Development of Nursing Practice in Nineteenth-Century England Mitchell Dean and Gail Bolton 5. A Constant Casualty: Nurse Education in Britain and the USA to 1939 Celia Davies 6. Asylum Nursing Before 1914: A Chapter in the History of Labour Mick Carpenter 7. ‘The History of the Present’ – Contradiction and Struggle in Nursing Paul Bellaby and Patrick Oribabor 8. Old Wives’ Tales? Women Healers in English History Margaret Connor Versluysen 9. Archives and the History of Nursing Janet Foster and Julia Sheppard 10. Epilogue Charlotte Kratz. Notes on Contributors. Index.

Celia Davies was, at the time of original publication, Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology at the University of Warwick.