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Book Review in Nursing History Review | Volume 23, Issue 1 Book Reviews Nursing and Midwifery in Britain Since 1700 Gender, Vocation and Professional Competencies: The Danish Deaconess Foundation’s Educational Strategies and Contribution to the Nursing Curriculum 1863–1955 Florence Nightingale, Feminist Comrades in Health: U.S. Health Internationalist, Abroad and at Home A Cultural History of the Nurse’s Uniform Routledge Handbook on the Global History of Nursing The American Red Cross: From Clara Barton to the New Deal A Vision for the Bush: The NSW Bush Nursing Association 1911–1974 Learning the Healer’s Art: Nursing Education at Brigham Young University First World War Nursing: New Perspectives Caring and Killing: Nursing and Psychiatric Practice in Germany, 1931–1943 The Secret Rescue: An Untold Story of American Nurses and Medics Behind Nazi Lines At the Heart of Healing: Groote Schuur Hospital, 1938–2008 China Interrupted: Japanese Internment and the Reshaping of a Canadian Missionary Community Healing Histories: Stories From Canada’s Indian Hospitals Making Care Count: A Century of Gender, Race, and Paid Care Work Nursing History Review Vol 23 Issue 1 , DOI: 10.1891/1062-8061.23.139 Focus Previous Next Article Metrics As the title of this book suggests, nursing and midwifery are two distinct but closely related professions. Ann Borsay and Billie Hunter have assembled a collection of essays that examine key developments in the history of nursing and midwifery in Britain from 1700 to 2000. An edited volume presented in three distinct parts, the book offers a lucid and coherent analysis of how nursing and midwifery developed along similar, but distinct, paths through three centuries to emerge as modern professions within the British health system. The book is written by some of the leading scholars in the field of nursing and midwifery history, medical humanities, and related social history. The book opens with a short introductory chapter by the editors that sets the volume in the context of other published histories in the field and draws attention to some of the debates in the theory and method of “doing history,” including the importance of sources and narrative construction. Ann Borsay’s study of the period 1700–1830 examines the range of settings in which the modern nurse’s precursor operated and, importantly, demonstrates that expressions of the nursing role exemplified a distinct activity with a focus on the sick or injured body. Christine Hallett builds on this theme by examining later expressions of the nursing role within the community, poor law institutions, and voluntary hospitals and examines how nursing transitioned from a lower class occupation to become a “respectable” profession for ladies, built on a secular scientific professional training, which ultimately led to professional regulation. Andrew Hull and Andrea Jones examine the path on which nursing leaders attempted to take nursing in the period after 1920 and clearly demonstrate how competing professionalizing strategies and their associated discourses were self-defeating and ultimately unsuccessful in advancing nursing. The three chapters that examine midwifery open with Helen King’s study of the emergence and eventual preeminence of the man midwife through the application of scientific principles in the “active management” of childbirth. King shows how the traditional (woman) midwife navigated this new scientific landscape to emerge as occupationally weakened but no less skilled as a practitioner. Alison Nuttall examines how midwifery, like nursing, moved from being a lower class occupation to become an integral part of the scientific medical project and ultimately a state-regulated profession. This transition was realized through scientific professional training provided within the context of the growing medicalization of childbirth. Billie Hunter examines the development of midwifery from 1920 to 2000 and identifies several influences in the period, including the configuration of the British health service, the feminist movement, the public attitudes to childbirth, and the blurring of professional boundaries between midwifery and medicine and midwifery and nursing. Hunter concludes rather pessimistically that the professionalizing project of midwifery had limited success with “little evidence of a united midwifery voice.” Part III of the book contains three chapters that offer critical comparisons between nursing and midwifery. Winifred Connerton and Patricia D’Antonio compare the history of British nursing and midwifery with that of the United States, Canada, and Australia and show that their respective historical trajectories were somewhat different within and across countries, with differences being a function of disciplinary distinctiveness and the degree of disciplinary boundary permeability. Billy Hunter and Ann Borsay compare the two professions in Britain with reference to the way that the relationship between them developed over time and the influences on that relationship that resulted in either alliances or interprofessional rivalries. In the final chapter, Jane Sandall and Anne Marie Rafferty present a short epilogue in which they “bring the picture up to date” by drawing attention to several challenges that nursing and midwifery face in the 21st century. They conclude with a caution that poor practice “is not a thing of the past” and entreat nurses and midwives to show “clarity of purpose, courage, and collaboration.” In its scope, the book encompasses a period of three centuries. Although there is a risk that professional histories that span long chronological periods can omit the nuances of emergent professional roles or the critical social and political developments that shaped role development, on reading this book, there is no sense that this has occurred. Indeed, the chapter authors are very much on top of their respective topics, providing critical and comprehensive accounts of significant developments through well-sourced and cogently marshalled archival evidence. The overarching thesis of the book is that nursing and midwifery in Britain have distinct but commonly shared and interrelated histories. The book addresses several familiar themes in this field of nursing and midwifery history, notably class, gender, and social constructions of womanhood as influences in the struggle for social status and professional autonomy; interprofessional enmity associated with medical hegemony and medicine’s professional prerogative in clinical decision making; and the politics of health care. Historicizing professional roles can reveal the complexities of contemporary roles and so can provide important lessons for professional policy in areas such as professional regulation, scope of practice and curriculum, and instruction. This book should provide those charged with developing professional policy with a ready resource with which to contextualize their work. It should also provide students of nursing and midwifery with an authoritative and accessible account of the histories of their respective professions. The year 2013 is a year of celebration in Danish nursing. One hundred fifty years ago, in 1863, the Danish Deaconess Foundation founded the first formal nursing education program, and 50 years later, in 1913, the first matron in accordance with the Nightingale system was appointed with responsibility for nursing services and nursing education at a new secular public hospital in Copenhagen—Bispebjerg Hospital. It is not unusual to see jubilee publications written by doctors and/or architects, but this one is different. The Danish Deaconess Foundation has chosen to open up its private archives and rich primary data sources to ask the internationally recognized Danish nurse historian Susanne Malchau Dietz to recount the tale of the Danish deaconesses. Her resultant book is the account of the Deaconess Foundation, but it is first and foremost the collective biography of the range of strong women who chose the life of a deaconess to enable them to work as frontline nurses all over the country as well as behind the institutional scene in the motherhouse. Irrespective of their positions, they all influenced and formed the basis and development of the Deaconess Foundation. For Danish nurses, the Foundation is essential because it laid down the basis for nursing education not only the religious branches but also the secular and Nightingale-inspired nursing curriculum. The book tells in details about the struggle for formal education and the, at times, strained relations to the Danish Nurses’ Organization for the period 1863–1955. Malchau Dietz has wisely chosen to focus on community spirit and progressive education, the two factors that became decisive for the development of the Foundation since it was founded and that established its future path. The inspiration for the Danish Deaconess Foundation was the Protestant Deaconess Motherhouse in Kaiserswerth in Germany, and the driving force was the then Danish crown princess—later queen—Louise, in close cooperation with Louise Conring, the first matron of the deaconess community. Both women were both extremely well-connected, and although several other forces were involved, such as their access to philanthropic funds, Malchau Dietz documents the importance of the two women in the development of the very special culture and identity of the new institution and its educational mission. It must be remembered that the first deaconesses had to justify their mission in a Protestant country with a highly suspicious attitude to anything resembling a Catholic convent and institution. The reader gets good insight into the power struggles involved. Conring took on herself the responsibility to secure the female leadership of the deaconess community, which included control of the nursing service as well as of the nursing education program. Thus, the Danish Deaconess Foundation not only got a strong voice in religious philanthropic work, but it also became an active and professional actor in the surrounding secular health care system in Denmark. The book contains a wealth of factual information, but most especially, it tells the story of the many women who joined the community: who they were, their backgrounds, where they came from, and whether they stayed or left the community. To give life and body to all the names, Malchau Dietz uses quotations from their letters and/or from the original index cards of all the women who came to the community kept by the Sisters of the Deaconess Foundation since 1863. Thus, the book provides a fascinating record of the history of Danish nursing and the emergence of its nursing educational system. The way the entire story is presented makes it a very reader-friendly and delightful piece of scientific work to read. The book has relevant notes and citations of primary source material, and it is illustrated with original photos from the archives of the Deaconess Foundation. Unfortunately for international readers, it is written in Danish, but it is a very relevant book in Denmark because it documents some of the culture that has formed Danish nursing from 1863 until now. At a time when nurse educators as well as nursing students are seeking their own identity, the book offers a lot of important information to the pulse of the early Danish nursing history. This new biography treads the familiar ground of Nightingale’s life but views it in its entirety through a new lens—that of feminism. Clearly, her conclusions are in the title; she views Nightingale as a feminist. The story of Nightingale’s life is nicely written and complete. Although no dramatically new information is revealed in the narrative, it is very nicely presented with black-and-white original drawings and sketches placed strategically throughout the text, giving it an elegant look, as does the font and typesetting. Cromwell relied on the much-used biographies of Nightingale (Sir Edward Cook, Ida Beatrice O’Malley, Cecil Woodham-Smith, and Martha Vinicus) as well as the recently published Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, edited by Lynn McDonald. However, she also spent time researching primary source data on her own in Great Britain as well as visiting the Florence Nightingale Museum, the manuscript reading room of the British Library and the Wellcome Library, the National Portrait Gallery and the Photographic Survey, and the Courtauld Institute of Art, in London. She visited Columbia University archives and the New York Public Library in New York City as well as the Costume Institute of New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art. In addition, she used two physicians for insight and consultation into well-documented health conditions of Nightingale. Beginning with a chapter entitled “The Child is the Mother of the Woman,” Cromwell situates Nightingale as a woman who needed to get away from the script her mother Fanny envisioned for her life. She situates Nightingale, born in 1820, in her well-heeled lifestyle: three homes—one at Embley Park near London, one in London, and one in Lea Hurst in Derbyshire-European travel—and a large extended family—in refreshing prose. The chapter ends with the well-known, first “call to work” received by Florence on February 7, 1837, she thinks is from God. The family “battles” are detailed over the curse of the next chapters, all centered on Florence’s need to be useful, to “nurse,” to not marry, and most of all, to not conform to the life her mother envisioned for her. In a chapter entitled “The Penultimate Battle,” Florence turned down a proposal of marriage to her family’s great distress. And the next chapter, “The Prison Called Family” (these were words penned by Florence herself), documents Florence’s struggle to break free of the confines of family and to travel to Kaiserswerth, Germany, for nurses’ “training.” Although she succeeded in doing this, the toll on all involved in this family drama was severe. She returned home, however, more determined than ever. She would become “a matron at a large public hospital” (p. 88). Her next move was to London, where she took over the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances on Harley Street in London. She was 33 years of age. It would be another year before her true “destiny” beckoned, and she left to nurse the entire British Army in the Crimea in 1855. The next chapters of her external life are well-known; Cromwell, however, manages to relay this often told tale in vivid prose while keeping intact—and in her own words—the “scripts” running through Florence’s head, keeping the tonality intact. These chapters take up more than 80 pages of the book. Nightingale lived a lengthy life, dying at age 90 years in 1910. These years waxed and waned in activity levels. Parts Nightingale spent in seclusion and in bed; these often included periods of intense writing and activity however. There are many theories regarding the “illnesses” she suffered. Cromwell offers no definitive conclusions in this area but continually brings the reader back to the point that family demands persisted after the Crimea and that Florence still had to fight to accomplish the work she was “called” to do against great resistance. The binds of conventional life for a woman of her station and status continued to haunt her. Certain points that relate to Nightingale’s complex views on women’s rights are not brought up, however. For example, Nightingale’s first cousin was the radical feminist Barbara Leigh-Smith Bodichon. A much-loved daughter of Fanny’s older brother, she was one of several illegitimate children that he fathered with the same women, who died when Barbara was young. He educated his daughter in the same manner as his sons—as Nightingale’s father educated Florence and her sister Parthe—and fixed an independent income of £500 a year (a good sum at the time) on this beloved daughter that enabled her to leave home and establish an independent life. Was this in the back of Nightingale’s father’s mind when several years later, he finally agreed to provide an income of £300 a year to allow Florence to establish herself in London on her own and become the matron of the Institution for the Care of Sick Gentlewomen in Distressed Circumstances on Harley Street? What were the conventional Fanny’s views as to this family? Barbara went on to establish and publish a radical journal espousing women’s rights, including the right to vote; married an Algerian physician; and found Girton College in Cambridge, one of the 31 constituent colleges of the University of Cambridge, along with her colleagues Emily Davies and Lady Stanley of Aderley, in 1869. It was the first residential college for women. Were these influences that set Nightingale in a mode of “reformer” of the status quo as opposed to a more radical feminist view such as those of Barbara? Cromwell does not delve here; feminism is alluded to in implicit, not always explicit, ways. Nonetheless, this book is a great start for someone new to Nightingale’s life. This book is definitely a good introduction to Nightingale—well-sourced, the first full-length biography set in a postfeminist framework, and beautifully written and illustrated with a narrative style that keeps the reader interested and involved. Cromwell has clearly done her homework. Comrades in Health: U.S. Health Internationalist, Abroad and at Home describes the generations of leftist health professionals who crossed international borders, driven by political ideals and humanitarian impulse. Their aim was twofold: to deliver health care services and to engage in political activism. This fusion of social medicine and proletarian internationalism created the philosophical and political agendas that became known as “health internationalism.” Editors Anne-Emanuell Birn and Theodore M. Brown invite the readers on a captivating journey through the political, economic, and social turmoil that embroiled global health care during the 20th century. The critical contributions by health internationalists, historically marginalized for their political views and often unacknowledged, are outlined with depth, sensitivity to context, and obvious relativism to contemporary health care discourse. This collection of essays, autobiographical when possible, traces the birth, development, trials, and tribulations of these unsung heroes. The book is more than a historical account; it is a critique and a calling to providers, public health officials, teachers, students, economists, policymakers, and philanthropists to consider thoughtfully the historical and contemporary approaches to global health inequality within a broader political and social context. Upholding the philosophy that social, economic, and political structures are the driving forces of health disparities did not always serve health internationalists well in reputation or profession upon their return to the United States. Part II of the book begins with an account of John Kingsbury’s advocacy for socialist medicine in the Soviet Union. Author Susan Solomon, using various primary source data now available, depicts the cost of his leftist political...
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