1918-1919 Flu Pandemic thoughts
Feb. 23rd, 2019 02:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
dancing_crowAfter reading siderea 's epic recap of the flu pandemic in Boston a century ago, I found this piece in Slate an interesting read, in part because of the contrast between the responses of doctors and nurses to the sickness, the patients, and the carnage. Doctors were abruptly not the heroes of the story, while attention shifted to nursing and nurses, an the effort they were expending. The idea that caretaking is what women do naturally is wrapped into nursing, but reading about nurses' personal responses to the pandemic shows they felt they were doing important work, and developing professionally, in ways that were exciting even as they were at odds with the experiences of the rest of the country.
siderea 's epic recap of the flu pandemic in Boston a century ago, I found this piece in Slate an interesting read, in part because of the contrast between the responses of doctors and nurses to the sickness, the patients, and the carnage. Doctors were abruptly not the heroes of the story, while attention shifted to nursing and nurses, an the effort they were expending. The idea that caretaking is what women do naturally is wrapped into nursing, but reading about nurses' personal responses to the pandemic shows they felt they were doing important work, and developing professionally, in ways that were exciting even as they were at odds with the experiences of the rest of the country.