Originally published in 1980, this book written by nurses, historians and sociologists, challenges conventional forms of nursing history. Rather than a chronology of events or a focus on great men or women as instigators of change, the contributions address specific questions to historical data, posing and evaluating contrasting interpretations. They set out quite deliberately to ask new questions and to find new research materials. Several of the chapters refer to the nursing reforms in the hospitals in the nineteenth century and in doing so they raise new questions about the character of those reforms and the way in which they still affected us at the time.

There is a focus on 'professional matters' such as work organisation and training and a discussion of nursing as 'women's work'. Nursing itself, it is argued, is not a homogenous profession, as material on early psychiatric nursing demonstrates.

In short, a plurality of issues that embrace social history, health professionalism, feminist questions and the history of labour and welfare, are shown to be relevant to a richer and more challenging history of nursing.