Historical Encyclopaedia of Nursing

One of the differences between a profession and a job is that a profession has a history. A growth of interest in their predecessors’ activities goes with an increasing sense of professional identity. It is now nigh on 20 years since I tried to persuade the health visitors of this fact (Guha and Wood, 1981), with very little success. Most nurses used to cram up a bit about Florence Nightingale for their final examinations, and more or less leave it at that. I was, therefore, quite interested to receive this volume for review, to see whether things have changed much....