Health: Nursing History

During her parents' 3-year honeymoon in Europe, Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, in Florence, Italy. She was named after her birthplace.

From The Palgrave MacMillan Dictionary of women's biography English nurse. The daughter of a clergyman, Edith worked as a governess then trained as a nurse, working through a typhoid epidemic before graduating at the London Hospital.

Civil War Nurse, Founder of the American Red Cross. Clara Barton was the most famous of many women who worked heroically to provide care and comfort to wounded Civil War soldiers. In so doing, she and others like her raised the nation’s standards for the care of its fallen soldiers.

From Notable American Women: 1607-1950 Was born in Roxbury, Mass., near Boston, the eldest of three children of Charles and Mary Jane (Stewart) Mahoney, who had migrated to Massachusetts from North Carolina. Little is known of her life before her enrollment, on Mar. 23, 1878, in the nursing school of the New England Hospital for Women and Children in Boston.

From Encyclopedia of women social reformers The achievements of the Jamaican Creole woman Mary Seacole, who ignored the indifference of British War Office bureaucracy to travel to the Crimea to pioneer the nursing of the sick and wounded during the war of 1854–1856 at her own expense, have been all too often eclipsed by the work of her more eminent and influential contemporary, Florence Nightingale

Margaret Sanger, feminist and activist, has been identified as the founder of the birth control movement. Sanger believed that women needed accurate information and knowledge about their own bodies.

Dorothea Dix was a renowned social reformer and vocal advocate for the humane treatment of people with psychiatric disabilities.

From The Palgrave MacMillan Dictionary of women's biography English nurse and politician. Ethel Manson’s father was a doctor who died when she was three; her stepfather was an MP.

From Notable American women: 1607-1950 Pioneer nursing educator

From The Companion to British History, Routledge Nursing was originally in the hands of monastic orders, and declined into disrepute after their dissolution

From Encyclopedia of Nursing Research The first public health policy act was signed on July 16, 1798, by President John Adams.

From The Cambridge Dictionary of scientists The learned Western medical tradition traces its origin to the works of a mysterious Greek physician, Hippocrates.

From Key Concepts in Public Health
The association between human disease and the growth of centres of population has long been observed and the concept of action at a community or population level to influence health is not new;