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Say Little, Do Much: Nursing, Nuns, and Hospitals in the Nineteenth Century (Studies in Health, Illness, and Caregiving)

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When we think of hospitals, we think medicine, doctors, surgery, not nurses and nursing. But this well-written book highlights the role that nurses played in the creation of the American hospital system. During the 19th century, nursing nuns from Ireland, France, Germany, Quebec, and Scandinavia traveled to the new world and set up hospitals all across America. They raised the money for hospital construction, gathered community support, went into business arrangements with medicine, thus giving doctors the opportunity to extend their practice into hospitals. They also established commercial arrangements with the companies that moved across the American frontier, so that the sisters could provide services to the workers who opened up the American continent.

Nelson tells this story in riveting detail. She explains how religious devotion fueled these women to overcome tremendous social and physical obstacles, yet also made them invisible to the rest of society, including, ironically, much of nursing . Her exploration debunks the traditional heroic nursing narrative, which focuses almost exclusively on the accomplishments of Florence Nightingale and tells mainly the English nursing story. Her characters are Irish, German, French, and Scandinavian immigrant women. They are Catholic nuns and Protestant deaconesses. More than this, Nelson demystifies the individualistic narrative which tends to attribute the creation of the profession to stellar individuals acting on their own. Nelson's story is of women working in community to create the hospital system.
This book is, of course, of interest to nurses. But it deserves a much wider audience. Scholars and observors of women's history will find this book an invaluable addition to the literature on the contributions of women to the development of social institutions. Similarly, anyone intereted in health policy and the history of the American hospital and health care system will find this book enlightening.