Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell, ca. 1860

Why Not Just Be a Nurse?

To be taken seriously as physicians, women doctors in nineteenth-century Britain felt the need to distinguish themselves from others of their gender.
A nurse bottle-feeding a baby at St Vincent's Hospital, Montclair, Mexico, 1955

The Milk Banks of New York

Milk banks, a successor concept to wet nursing, are a little discussed part of the contemporary landscape of infant care.
Florence Nightingale

How Courageous Should Nurses Have to Be?

According to three scholars, it's asking a lot for health care professionals to be completely selfless.
A graduate nurse and student nurses in isolation uniforms, early 1900s

Nurses Have Always Been Heroes

Nothing drives that home more than this amazing photo collection from the Philadelphia General Hospital School of Nursing.
A flamingo feeding its young

How Non-Mammals “Nurse” Their Young

Some birds feed their young with "crop milk," while discus fish feed their fry with a special mucus. It may not seem as cute as nursing, but it works.
Rosalie Slaughter Morton and Anne Morgan, an American philanthropist, in 1918

The Forgotten Women Physicians of World War I

For women physicians, WWI was an opportunity for service that highlighted their deeply ambiguous position, as Ellen More explained in a 1989 paper.
Nurses

19th-Century Nurses’ Fight to Battle Yellow Fever

With warnings that a shortage of the vaccine against the virus could spur on a new epidemic, yellow fever is again in the scientific spotlight.
A maternity ward worker holds a baby in an empty hospital hall

Ready for the 11-Hour Work Day?

Will the 11-hour work day become a reality?