Nursing & Practical Nursing: History

These are titles that have been identified as containing historical information related to the nursing profession, as well as titles considered to be "classics" in nursing.

Fosters the importance of history as relevant to understanding the past, defining the present, and influencing the future of nursing.

Nurses whose dedication and achievements have significantly affected the nursing profession.

Assembles and publishes reference materials, oral histories, original works, web publications, special studies, AMEDD newspaper/professional publications and print series.

Aims to increase the profile of nursing and midwifery history in the community, and ensure that historically important nursing and midwifery resources are identified, conserved, and accessible.

Archives contains historical documents, publications, photographs, biographical profiles, oral histories, nursing equipment, pins, uniforms, books, & memorabilia. Site also includes online exhibits.

Repository of Rochester General's rich heritage. Collections include minute books of Rochester General's various boards from 1847 to present, scrapbooks, uniforms, memorabilia, and a 22,000-image photo collection. (The Archives collection reflects the hospital's 150-year growth from the first board meeting to the present.) Included is the Rochester General Hospital School of Nursing Alumni Collection, 1880-1964.

Ensures the generation of historical knowledge, scholarship, and research on healthcare and nursing history in the United States and around the world, thereby enabling a better understanding of contemporary healthcare issues.

Bibliography and guide to web resources from the Campbell Library at Rowan University.

Promotes interest in the history of nursing and to develop scholarship in the field.

Collection of nursing memorabilia from New York State and beyond, including papers, photos, letters, uniforms, and other memorabilia.

Includes Nightingale’s major published books, articles and pamphlets (many long out of print) and a vast amount of heretofore unpublished correspondence and notes. Extensive databases, notably a chronology and names index, and the original, unedited, transcriptions, will also be published in electronic form. This will permit convenient access to scholars interested not only in Nightingale but other major figures of her time.

Online exhibit to honor one of the first martyrs of World War I.

Commemorating Edith Cavell, the World War I British nurse who is celebrated for saving the lives of soldiers in Brussels from all sides without distinction.

Established at the University of Virginia in 1991 to support historical scholarship in nursing. It is dedicated to the preservation and study of nursing history.

Celebrates the life and work of the best-known figure in nursing history. The collection consists of personal material associated with Florence Nightingale including one of her famous lamps used by her during the Crimean War, her pet owl Athena, her iconic black dress and a nurse uniform from her training school.

Mary Breckinridge, Frontier’s founder, was a compassionate and visionary pioneer nurse who, with her nurse colleagues, traveled on horseback to deliver care and attend births in Kentucky’s rural Appalachian mountains. This timeline highlights the important events leading up to the founding of this institution in 1939 and just some of the many ‘milestones’ it has reached in more than seven decades since.

This national guide to nursing historical resources is the product of a national survey of nursing resources in Canadian archives, museums, and professional nursing organizations.

Includes an historical timeline, historical narrative, and the archives collection.

Displays hundreds of historic items, including a 19th century nurse’s uniform, early 20th century textbooks and medical apparatus, and wartime letters and photographs collected by nurses serving in the military. It also features video and audio histories of nurses recounting stories from previous generations.

Central repository for nursing historical documents and artifacts from the Midwestern United States and serves as a center for scholars engaged in historical research.

Includes materials owned and used by Miss Benoist during her career as a Public Health Nurse in Mississippi during the 1930s.

Documentation from Helen T. Burrey, an American nurse who served the Red Cross during WWI.

Dedicated to sharing the history and heritage of organized nursing in North Carolina.

Helen Fairchild was a member of the Pennsylvania Hospital Unit during World War I. This website features a summary of her life and considerable correspondence from Miss Fairchild to family during her service at the front.

Source of historical background information on issues regarding the nursing profession and the provision of nursing care.

Tribute to Canadian Nursing Sisters tells of these brave and dedicated women. Their story is one of humor as well as anguish. It is a story of unyielding women who braved all the hardships of war to do their duty and care for their patients, and of those who nursed the casualties left in the wake of war.

Includes over 1,500 images spanning the years 1880 to the 1970s. The collection features not only the School of Nursing, but also the wards and campus of the Philadelphia Almshouse and the Philadelphia General Hospital.

Consists of postcards with images of nurses and the nursing profession from around the world, produced between 1893 and 2011 with many examples coming from the ‘Golden Age’ of postcards—roughly 1907 to 1920.

Honors pioneer nurses who were nurses in West Virginia from the 1860s through 1935. Also included are nurses from West Virginia who served in wars, from the Civil War through the Korean War.

Includes records from Presbyterian Hospital School of Nursing, St. Luke's Hospital Training School for Nurses, and Presbyterian-St. Luke's Hospital School of Nursing, all located in Chicago.

Browse the collection of this school of nursing which was formed during the first quarter of the twentieth century when southern law and social practice demanded separate facilities for the races.

Dedicated to collecting, preserving and making available the documentary heritage of Southern workers and their unions, as well as that of workers and unions having an historic relationship to the region.

Designed to stimulate interest in the history of nursing in the Commonwealth and to perpetuate the legacy of those nurses who shaped health care in Virginia.