Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of American Nursing, 1850 1945

by Susan M. Reverby

Book Overview

An engaging study of the dilemmas faced by American nursing, which examines the ideology, practice, and efforts at reform of both trained and untrained nurses in the years between 1850 and 1945. Ordered to Care provides an overall history of nursing's development and places that growth within the context of new questions raised by women's history and the social history of health care. Building upon extensive use of primary and quantitative data, the...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0521335655
• ISBN13: 9780521335652
• Release Date: August 1987
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Length: 304 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Ordered to Care: The dilemma of American nursing, 1850-1945

I enjoyed this book immensely. The author chronicles the history of nursing from pre-training schools to post-WW11. The author is not a nurse and her focus is on the history of women in society. The book is broken down into three parts - the nurse and the hospital before training (two chapters), the trained nurse: an apprentice to duty (four chapters), and the "re-forming" of nursing (four chapters). The style is easy to read and very detailed with narratives, biographies, and statistics. Anyone who is interested in the history of nursing should read this book.