Papers from a conference held May 1981, sponsored by the Rockefeller Archive Center.

Introduction -- Nursing history : new perspectives, new possibilities /Ellen Condliffe Lagemann -- Organized nurses, women philanthropists, and the intellectual bases for cooperation among women, 1898-1920 / Susan Armeny -- Professionalizing strategies as time and culture bound : American and British nursing, circa 1893 / Celia Davies -- Public health, midwives, and nurses, 1880-1930 / Jane Pacht Brickman -- False dawn : the rise and decline of public health nursing in America, 1900-1930 / Karen Buhler-Wilkerson -- The silent battle : nurse registration in New York State, 1903-1920 / Nancy Tomes -- "Something besides waiting" : the politics of private duty nursing reform in the Depression / Susan Reverby -- Doctors, patients, and "big nurse" : work and gender in the postwar hospital / Barbara Melosh -- Nursing historigoraphy, 1960-1980 : an annotated bibliography / Mary Ann Dzuback.