- Toronto, Ontario, Canada
- Since 1993 Carol Helmstadter has published more than 20 articles on nursing history in scholarly journals and co-au... moreSince 1993 Carol Helmstadter has published more than 20 articles on nursing history in scholarly journals and co-authored Nursing Before Nightingale, an award-winning book, with Judith Godden. She published Beyond Nightingale: Nursing on the Crimean Battle Fields in 2020, a book which compares the nursing and medical services in the five Crimean War armies.edit
- Professor |Trevor Lloydedit
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Contents: Preface Glossary The new medicine and its dependence on good nursing Hospital nursing in the first part of the century The ward system: a doctor-driven reform Early efforts at training Nursing at the crossroads, part I: ladies... more
Contents: Preface Glossary The new medicine and its dependence on good nursing Hospital nursing in the first part of the century The ward system: a doctor-driven reform Early efforts at training Nursing at the crossroads, part I: ladies and religious sisters in the Crimean war Nursing at the crossroads, part 2: working-class nurses in the Crimean War St John's House and its mission The St John's House central nursing system The demise of sisterhood nursing and the central system Conclusion Bibliography Index.
Research Interests:
The boundaries between medicine, religion, nursing and domestic service were fluid in mid-nineteenth-century England. The traditional religious understanding of illness conflicted with the newer understanding of anatomically based... more
The boundaries between medicine, religion, nursing and domestic service were fluid in mid-nineteenth-century England. The traditional religious understanding of illness conflicted with the newer understanding of anatomically based disease, the Anglican sisters were drawing a line between professional nursing and the traditional role of nurses as domestic servants who looked after sick people as one of their many duties, and doctors were looking for more knowledgeable nurses who could carry out their orders competently. This prosopographical study of the over 200 women who served as government nurses during the Crimean War 1854-56 describes the status of nursing and provides a picture of the religious and social structure of Britain in the 1850s. It also illustrates how religious, political and social factors affected the development of the new nursing. The Crimean War nurses can be divided into four major groups: volunteer secular ladies, Roman Catholic nuns, Anglican sisters and working-class hospital nurses. Of these four groups I conclude that it was the experienced working-class nurses who had the greatest influence on the organization of the new nursing.
Research Interests:
The reform of hospital nursing in the last quarter of the nineteenth century brought nursing leaders into conflict with the gendered and class bound structure of Victorian society. The experiences of Maria Machin are used in this article... more
The reform of hospital nursing in the last quarter of the nineteenth century brought nursing leaders into conflict with the gendered and class bound structure of Victorian society. The experiences of Maria Machin are used in this article as an example of the barriers nursing leaders had to overcome in order to establish a competent nursing service. While Machin was eminently successful in improving patient care and expanding the knowledge base of her nurses, she could not change the perceptions of nursing which the public at large held. At the beginning of the nineteenth century hospital nurses had been essentially cleaning women who gave some of the less important nursing care. They formed a cheap service which many hospital governors considered a relatively low priority in the overall operation of the hospital. This view of nursing persisted long after the reformers had made nursing into something quite different. Machin's nursing career also illustrates how nursing participated in a major aspect of British imperialism, the export of professional expertise and administrative skills as well as the way nursing fitted into the rise of the new professionalism.
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
Research Interests:
The Nightingale Fund Council sent only two teams of nursing overseas, one to Sydney and one to Montreal. In both cases the Council withdrew its support within three years. In both cases the nurses made vast improvements to patient care... more
The Nightingale Fund Council sent only two teams of nursing overseas, one to Sydney and one to Montreal. In both cases the Council withdrew its support within three years. In both cases the nurses made vast improvements to patient care but met fierce opposition when they tried to achieve status in the public sphere of the hospital.
Research Interests:
The reform of hospital nursing in the last quarter of the nineteenth century brought nursing leaders into conflict with the gendered and class bound structure of Victorian society. The experiences of Maria Machin are used in this article... more
The reform of hospital nursing in the last quarter of the nineteenth century brought nursing leaders into conflict with the gendered and class bound structure of Victorian society. The experiences of Maria Machin are used in this article as an example of the barriers nursing leaders had to overcome in order to establish a competent nursing service. While Machin was eminently successful in improving patient care and expanding the knowledge base of her nurses, she could not change the perceptions of nursing which the public at large held. At the beginning of the nineteenth century hospital nurses had been essentially cleaning women who gave some of the less important nursing care. They formed a cheap service which many hospital governors considered a relatively low priority in the overall operation of the hospital. This view of nursing persisted long after the reformers had made nursing into something quite different. Machin's nursing career also illustrates how nursing participated in a major aspect of British imperialism, the export of professional expertise and administrative skills as well as the way nursing fitted into the rise of the new professionalism.
Research Interests:
Nursing faced complex problems of class, religion and gender in a medical world which was moving rapidly in terms of its power and status. The first generation of nurse reformers were motivated by religious philanthropy while in the... more
Nursing faced complex problems of class, religion and gender in a medical world which was moving rapidly in terms of its power and status. The first generation of nurse reformers were motivated by religious philanthropy while in the second generation a small number of lady nurses seized control of the leadership and focused on their own social status.
Starting after the close of the Napoleonic Wars docors in the London teaching hospitals a number of doctors began training the sisters of heir wards in proper nursing care. As medical science improved these doctors pressed hospital... more
Starting after the close of the Napoleonic Wars docors in the London teaching hospitals a number of doctors began training the sisters of heir wards in proper nursing care. As medical science improved these doctors pressed hospital administrators to introduce more formal nurse training.
Nursing Inquiry 2009; 16 (2): 133-43 The women who nursed during the Crimean War present a picture of nursing in the process of evolving into one of the many new Victorian professions. The approximately 219 women for whom we have... more
Nursing Inquiry 2009; 16 (2): 133-43 The women who nursed during the Crimean War present a picture of nursing in the process of evolving into one of the many new Victorian professions. The approximately 219 women for whom we have records illustrate the sharply stratified class structure and religious divisions in English society. They represent every level of the working and middle classes and almost every religious denomination. The Crimean nurses also demonstrate every level of nursing knowledge and expertise as well as all the failings of nurses in the 1850’s. This article revises the received wisdom that it was Florence Nightingale and her lady nurses who led the nineteenth century nursing reforms and argues that the working class hospital nurses had a bigger impact on the development of the new nursing. By the mid-nineteenth century nursing had emerged as a serious body of knowledge requiring clinical experience and professional judgement.
