Chapter 1: “Professed” nursing: from duty to trade Lauren Heeke Cohort 7

 Originally a duty, not a job  “In sickness and in health”  Obligation to family trumped any paid position

 Physical and emotional strength, skill, and patience were required  Food and tonic preparation  Dressing changes  Application of plasters, poultices, leeches  Massages  Emotional comfort and support  By the time of the Civil War, the “professed” nurse became more popular

 Expanding industrial economy  Importance of parenting in middle class families  “Duty” took on new meanings  For some, caring as love could be separated from caring as labor, and a woman’s virtues were maintained

 Child nurse/nursemaid  Wet nurse  Midwife  Monthly nurse  Sick nurse  Work varied depending on the patient and family  Nurse had the freedom to diagnose and change doctor’s orders on her own as she gained experience  Reputation varied

 The nurse was not as lowly as a simple domestic, nor as highly ranked as a cook  Wage was between that of a seamstress and a cook  Gratuities became expected  Became mostly work for white, native-born, older, or poor women as domestic duties were performed mostly by slaves  Marital status

 Many women who survived their husbands became “professed nurses”  Home for Aged Women (Boston) was home for “respectable poor” (retired professionals) kept records that give insight to the lives of these women  Most retired nurses who lived here came from families of farmers  Between about half of these women had never married  After this, 60% were widowed, separated, or divorced and 40% had never married

 Older woman did not often “choose” nursing but were left with few options  Virginia Penny: “To make a kind and sympathizing nurse, one must have waited, in sickness, upon those she loved dearly”  A sympathetic physician or druggist often allowed women to establish themselves as nurses  Nearly 25% of all women in the Home for Aged Woman had been a nurse at some point

 To be accepted as a nurse, a woman needed to have many years’ experience caring for the sick  Younger nurses were allowed to do only some nursing, and needed practice and life experience to develop their “natural- born” tendencies  Due to sexuality and contagion, older women were more suited as nurses

 Most sickness, birthing, and dying took place in the home  As notions of middle class working women grew, nursing became less important to concept of “womanhood”  Nursing could easily become a trade to be “professed” in the working world

 Women were available to perform nursing work for wages, and middle and upper class families were willing to pay  In mid 1800s, physicians began to give advice based on assumptions that families would have a relative or hired labor to deliver the ordered care  1870: 10,000 women claimed to be nurses  1940: 100,000 women claimed to be nurses  Remained primarily older women with no formal education

 Nursing evolved from dutiful caretakers to nursing as professionals -although still characterized by older, uneducated women  Paralleled women’s social status in American culture over time  By 1940s, nursing as a profession had gained acceptance

Reverby, S. M. (1987). “Professed” nursing: from duty to trade. Ordered to Care (11- 16). Cambridge, United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press.