The Johns Hopkins training school for nurses a tale of vision, labor, and futility

Nursing History Review

Volumn 5, Issue , 1997, Pages 23-48

  Ramos, Mary Carol ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF VIRGINIA HEALTH SYSTEM   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ART; ARTICLE; HISTORY; NURSE ADMINISTRATOR; NURSING EDUCATION; UNITED STATES;

BALTIMORE; EDUCATION, NURSING; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HISTORY, 20TH CENTURY; NURSE ADMINISTRATORS; PORTRAITS; SCHOOLS, NURSING;

EID: 0030636982     PISSN: 10628061     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1891/1062-8061.5.1.23     Document Type: Article

References (14)

1. Hopkins had been sent as a youngster to live with an uncle in Baltimore. His father's fortune diminished when Quaker policies dictated freeing the slaves he employed, leaving Johns, the second son, without prospects for making a living. Nevertheless, by midlife he had amassed a fortune in investment banking and managed the Baltimore and Ohio Railroad. A comprehensive overview of conditions in American institutions of the day can be found in Charles E. Rosenberg, The Care of Strangers: The Rise of America's Hospital System (New York: Basic Books, 1987),
2. and David J. Rothman, The Discovery of the Asylum (Boston: Little, Brown and Company 1971).
3. Efforts toward providing trained nurses to care for the ill are addressed in Susan Armeny, "Resolute Enthusiasts: The Effort to Professionalize American Nursing, 1880-1915" (PhD diss., University of Missouri, Columbia, 1983);
4. Janet Wilson James, "Isabel Hampton and the Professionalization of Nursing in the 18905," in The Therapeutic Revolution: Essays in the Social History of American Medicine, ed. Morris J. Vogel and Charles E. Rosenberg (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1979), 201-44.
5. Ada M. Carr wrote of Hopkins in "The Early History of the Hospital and the Training School," Johns Hopkins Nurses' Alumnae Magazine 8 (June 1909): 54-76;
6. see also Ethel Johns and Blanche Pfefferkorn, The Johns Hopkins Hospital School of Nursing, 1802-1942 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1954).
7. Hopkins's wishes can be read in his 1873 letter, Johns Hopkins, "Letter to the Trustees," Johns Hopkins Hospital Bulletin 1 (December 1889): 4.
8. Alan Chesney, The Johns Hopkins and the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, 1889-1963 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1943), 1:40.
9. Gilman served on the faculty at Yale and as president of the University of California. While spending the mid-185 in Berlin, he became impressed with the German model of education: the balancing of faculty teaching and research, the encouragement of publication, the academic independence of faculty, and the use of mentoring and fellowship programs. Each of these elements was incorporated into the design of Johns Hopkins. While this model was foreign to this country, the industrial revolution and the growth of scientific instrumentation and research increased the feasibility of its success. Gilman is credited with leading the movement of medicine into the university. Harvey Gushing, The Life of Sir William Osier (Oxford: Clarendon, 1925), 2:311.
10. See also Paul Starr, Tlie Social Transformation of American Medicine (New York: Basic Books, 1982);
11. A. McGehee Harvey, Gert Brieger, Susan Abrams, and Victor McCusick, A Model of Its Kind, Volume I: A Centennial History of Medicine at Johns Hopkins (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989).
12. Hopkins, 4.
13. See Bertram M. Bernheim, The Story of the Johns Hopkins (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1948), 7;
14. Chesney, vol. 1; Hopkins. The physicians' renown was enhanced by Gilman's dedication to providing a convenient mechanism for the publication of scholarly research, the Johns Hopkins Press.