Hektoen International

A Journal of Medical Humanities

Category: Nursing

  • Nurse brings in the meal for a convalescing patient

    This scene is from the nineteenth century, when most sick people were being cared for at home. A family member is reading to a convalescing young woman, while a nurse seen on the far right is bringing in the patient’s medicine, or more likely the meal, which she has probably prepared herself. A girl reads…

  • Operating room nurses

    Two nurses and a male porter are returning to the ward a patient who has just undergone surgery. Another nurse is holding up a bottle of blood or saline. Operating room staff wheeling a patient back into a ward after an operation. Oil painting by Ethel Macmillan, ca. 1940. Credit: Wellcome Collection. (CC BY 4.0)  …

  • Nurse dressing a wounded soldier during World War I

    This painting by John Lavery, published in the Burlington Magazine, (September 2014, Vol. 156 | No. 1338) shows a wounded World War I soldier having his arm dressed by a nurse. She wears the traditional uniform of nurses, with a veil attached to her cap, reflecting the times when nurses were still being addressed as…

  • Florence Nightingale at Scutari

    When Florence Nightingale arrived at Scutari during the Crimean War, the army hospital was filthy and rat-infested, and among the 2,000 wounded lying there the mortality was fifty percent. After she reorganized the wards and insisted on absolute cleanliness, mortality declined to a little over one percent. The Mission of Mercy: Florence Nightingale receiving the…

  • Learning to heal

    Jeanne Bryner Nora Mazur Newton Falls, Ohio, United States   Top pieced by Jeanne Bryner Quilting done by Nora Mazur Jeanne Bryner: Quilts are important in my Appalachian culture. Narratives of beauty and truth are pieced together, preserving family history. This quilt contains photos of a special family of international sisters and brothers in the…

  • Moments in nursing

    Jeanne Bryner Nora Mazur Newton Falls, Ohio, United States   Top pieced by Jeanne Bryner Quilting done by Nora Mazur Jeanne Bryner: On any given day, one of our cells may deviate from its usual path. Others cells may follow, leading us from a state of wellness to one of illness. How can we survive…

  • “A Veritable Angel of Mercy”: the sardonic representation of Nurse Ratched in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest

    Mariella Scerri Mellieha, Malta   Group photograph of the first twenty Navy Nurses, appointed in 1908. Naval Photographer. 1908. Wikimedia. Public Domain. Critical acclaim and popular opinion have elevated Kesey’s first novel, One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest published in 1962, to something of a modern classic, much read and written about as well as adapted…

  • Is Mary Seacole the new mother of nursing?

    Mariella Scerri Mellieha, Malta   Sketch of Mary Seacole by Crimean war artist William Simpson (1823–1899), c. 1855. Source. The promotion of Jamaican businesswoman and “doctress” Mary Seacole as the pioneer nurse in place of Florence Nightingale was given considerable credence early in 2013, when Seacole was named a “pioneer of health care” by the UK Department…

  • Pediatric nurse

    A nurse checking on a playful child. Watercolour drawing by J.E. Sutcliffe, 1904. Credit: Wellcome Collection. CC BY 4.0   Nurses are often the first point of contact for patients entering the medical system. They perform essential work, and often spend more time with patients then physicians do, ensuring treatment is performed and the body…

  • The unity of nurses

    The great white army. Published 1915 in Italy by unknown publisher. Donated by Michael Zwerdling. The National Library of Medicine. No known copyright restrictions   This postcard, published in the midst of World War I in 1915, represents the unity of nurses across nations. In war time, many military nurses cared for wounded soldiers regardless…