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Abstract: In the spring of 1918, a virus swept across the world, killing approximately 50 million people by the summer of 1919. My grandmother, Kathryn ("Katie") Ann Darmody-an Irish immigrant who settled in New York State in 1904-was among the nurses who responded to this pandemic, which became known as the 1918 influenza pandemic (or, erroneously, the Spanish flu). Today, as the world contends with the COVID-19 pandemic, my grandmother's experiences resonate with new meaning-a reminder of how, then as now, nurses have been at the forefront of public health. Her story, transmitted across generations, is one I now share with a new generation of nurses., (Copyright © 2021 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.)

: Editor's note: From its first issue in 1900 through to the present day, AJN has unparalleled archives detailing nurses' work and lives over more than a century. These articles not only chronicle nursing's growth as a profession within the context of the events of the day, but they also reveal prevailing societal attitudes about women, health care, and human rights. Today's nursing school curricula rarely include nursing's history, but it's a history worth knowing. To this end, From the AJN Archives highlights articles selected to fit today's topics and times.This month's article, from the June 1926 issue, offers ideas "by which we hope to make ward experiences of more value to the student." Author Mina A. McKay originally presented this material at a meeting of the Massachusetts State League of Nursing Education. She calls for more comprehensive morning and evening reports ("not just a mere reading of… orders"), the use of student experience records, ward clinics ("the type of bedside talk which supplements class room lectures"), and case reports presented by the students themselves. Efforts to improve clinical nursing education are ongoing, and in "'Flipping' the Classroom" in this month's AJN, Diane M. Billings describes a relatively new way of translating clinical concepts into practice.

The voluntary medical care consisted of civilians who were provided to the medical corps in the First World War for the first time in this great dimension. The nursing staff on the eastern and the western German frontlines were sending letters back home, some of them were drafting diaries due to the special event or recorded their experiences after the war. Besides the narratives of their private impressions, these documents are reflecting their nursing work, which the nursing staff had to achieve. An important factor was, that the patients were soldiers. Conflicts in the cooperation with the medical staff and among the nurses did not seem to have influenced a good quality of care, however it facilitated a harmonic coexistence and above all, it helped to sustain behind the fronts. The study of the nursing care and the relationship with patients and among the staff reflects on the meaning of nursing care for the staff.

The development of nursing is analysed from the perspective of its situation in Germany today, and the requirements expected for the next years to come. It becomes apparent that nursing as a profession regulated by the state is a young profession, just some one hundred years old. During the 19th century nursing in Germany was mostly performed by sisterhoods bound to the church and organised as collectives. But it was stimulated and challenged by the development from a philosophically oriented library medicine to a scientifically oriented hospital medicine. Thus its transformation into a profession regulated by the state ended for the time being in 1906. Nursing sisterhoods in Germany were modelled for the French Daughters of Charity that had been planted in 1633 by Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac in Paris. Models for this planting are pointed to.

This research describes nurses' experiences in administering "the water cure," hot or cold wet sheet packs, and continuous tub baths in state mental hospitals during the early twentieth century. Student and graduate nurses were required to demonstrate competence in hydrotherapy treatments used to calm agitated or manic patients in the era before neuroleptics. The nurses interviewed for this study indicated that, although labor intensive, hydrotherapy worked, at least temporarily. Although no longer used in state hospitals, hydrotherapy is regaining popularity with the general public and may serve as an adjunct to pharmacological treatments to calm hospitalized patients in the future.

This paper is a personal journey through nurse training and perioperative practice. Nurse education is also explored alongside some of the social, academic and political changes that have influenced healthcare in the United Kingdom between 1966 and 2008. The views expressed are those of the author only, and the anecdotal descriptions are anonymous.

This article examines Catholic nursing orders in Denmark. In 1849, 300 years after the Reformation, freedom of worship was introduced in Lutheran Denmark. In 1856 the first Catholic nursing order in modern times settled in the country. Others followed, and in 1940 the nursing orders owned 17 general hospitals and had a share of 10% of the hospital beds in Denmark. The purpose of this article is to identify images in the public media text of these Catholic nursing orders in Denmark from 1856 to the present, and to deconstruct the existing angel image the nuns and sisters in nursing have obtained. The assumption is that the public image is an important indicator of how a profession is valued in society. Six images - three positive and three negative - are identified, and it is demonstrated that these images were closely connected to the nursing sisters' professional activities and confessional affiliation. Until the 1950s the image of nursing sisters as representing a counterculture in Lutheran Denmark persisted. This image was succeeded by one of professional nurses of high standards. The shift was caused by increased secularisation and the renewal of religious life, as a result of the Second Vatican Council in the 1960s.

During the more desperate years of the Great Depression a group of physicians brought an injunction proceeding against Dagmar Nelson and her employing hospital for illegally practicing medicine without a license. She administered general anesthesia and her employer knew it and supported her. It was a bizarre trial in that the arguments presented by both sides seem incongruous to our way of thinking today. The evidence presented at the trial echoed the predominant view at the time--the undisputed dominance of the male physician over the female nurse, who was portrayed, even by the defense, as only an extension of the surgeon who "has the power and therefore the responsibility" to control the surgery. Had she lost, anesthesia as a specialty of nursing would not exist. The method by which she won, however, has haunted us to this day. Part 1 of this 2-part column was published in the June 2006 AANA Journal.

Ontario nurses were employed as the front-line workers when SARS descended upon Toronto in March 2003. Once the crisis had subsided, many nurses remarked that SARS had forever altered their chosen profession; employment, which they once viewed as relatively safe, had been transformed into potentially life-threatening. This discussion provides descriptions of these expressions through nurses who experienced the crisis and chose to go on the public record. Secondly, it compares the subjective perceptions of those nurses to those held by nurses who worked through historical epidemics of unknown or contested epidemiology. The historical literature on nursing in yellow fever, cholera and influenza epidemics has been employed to offer insight. The goal is to determine whether the SARS outbreak was a unique experience for nurses or whether similar experiences were shared by nurses in the past? In summary, the reactions of nurses when confronted with the possibility of contracting a deadly disease remain altogether human, not dissimilar in past or present. Nurses' responses to SARS can be usefully studied within a larger historical vision of crisis nursing, and information or impressions from earlier crises are potentially of interest to the nursing profession.

Oral history methods were used to describe the experiences of American nurses who practiced in a state mental hospital before and during the introduction of antipsychotic medications. The nurses described their responsibilities for supervising staff, administering patient care, and assisting with special psychiatric treatments. They expressed resignation and frustration with trying to provide care despite obstacles such as unqualified physicians, crowded wards, and inadequate personnel and supplies. The nurses adopted a Cartesian approach in which they focused on the patient's body, instead of the patient's mind, and developed camaraderie among nurses through which they found acceptance and were able to continue to do a thankless job.