Easing Pain on the Western Front American Nurses of the Great War and the Birth of Modern Nursing Practice
Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
The former managing director of The Analytic Press, Inc., Paul E. Stepansky, Ph.D., is Interdisciplinary Research Faculty, DeWitt Wallace Institute for the History of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College.“Paul E. Stepansky’s <i>Easing Pain on the Western Front</i> is essential to understanding the contributions of the Great War’s American nursing women to revolutionary advances in medicine and the creation of a successful military evacuation system for the wounded. . . Reading the book is revelatory with regard to Great War hands-on nursing, [and] Stepansky’s book should be a supplementary textbook in every college’s nursing curriculum, to help students understand their historical roots. . . . He comments with enormous empathy and admiration on the reality that these American women never signed up and received a job description. The intelligence, courage, and strength of all these women is almost unbelievable.”—Rose Ethel Althaus Meza, <i>Journal of Military History</i>
“I never imagined how this book would draw me in with such compelling narrative flow. There is such power of evocation and dynamic movement on top of the overwhelming pathos, the panorama of you-are-there at the start, the fascinating transformations, and the richness of dynamic comparisons through the years. . . . the tone is so absolutely right. It is a humbling and awesome experience—not the expectable effect of a scholarly work. Stepansky has built a lasting monument to women where most of us were oblivious.”—Lawrence Friedman, M.D., Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College
“ . . . recommended reading and an essential volume in any collection of works dealing with the wounds, diseases, care, and treatment of World War 1 American soldiers deployed with the AEF. . . . a significant contribution to military medical history.”— Colonel (ret.) G. Alan Knight, <i>Journal of America’s Military Past</i>
“<i>Easing Pain on the Western Front</i> is particularly compelling in that it truly illustrates the relationship between nurses and patients and how each party is changed by the experience. . . . a unique book that rightfully takes a prominent place among the scholarly histories of healthcare during the Great War.”—Colonel (ret.) Richard M. Prior, DNP, Medical Humanities
“Stepansky provides an historically informed examination of nurses’ actual wartime practices—practices that changed the experience of wounded soldiers, in no small measure through nurses’ skilled use of the cutting-edge technologies of the time—technologies that contributed to the transformation of American nursing in the decades following the Great War.”—Patricia D’Antonio, Ph.D., RN, Director, Barbara Bates Center for the Study of the History of Nursing, University of Pennsylvania School of Nursing
“This book is a tremendously useful survey, and Stepansky’s reverence for nursing comes through in his frequently eloquent style. ...Stepansky makes some wonderful connections between and among nurses...Stepansky also supplies some fascinating information about the post-war lives of many of these nurses whom he quotes. ...highly recommended”—<i>The Watermark</i>
“Stepansky compares the medical procedures on the Western Front with those of earlier wars, giving special attention to new technologies that became essential for modern nursing.”—<i>Princeton Alumni Weekly</i>
“Dr. Stepansky’s narrative is terse, informative, and easy to read. Even if you aren’t a die-hard medical history buff it’s worth a read, especially since the spread of COVID-19 is as close as anything we’ve seen in the just over 100 years since the combination of a global conflict and a pandemic that killed millions ravaged the world.”—<i>Sierra Sacramento Valley Medicine</i>
World War I is regarded as the first modern war, driven by fearful new technologies of mechanized combat. The unprecedented carnage rapidly advanced military medicine, transforming the nature of wartime caregiving and paving the way for modern nursing practice. Drawing on firsthand accounts of American nurses, as well as their Canadian and British counterparts, historian Paul E. Stepansky describes nurses' encounters with devastating new forms of injury--wounds from high-explosive artillery shells, poison gas burns, "shell shock," the Spanish Flu. Comparing nursing practice on the western front with nursing care during the American Civil War, the Spanish-American War, and the Anglo-Boer War, the author is especially attentive to the emergent technologies employed by nurses of the Great War.
Acknowledgments
Preface
1. Epiphanies
2. Blood
3. Total Care
4. Poison Gas
5. Shell Shock
6. Plague
7. Onward
Chapter Notes
Bibliography
Index