March 31 - April 18, Meridian Campus
ISU Meridian Sam and Aline Skaggs Health Science Center, First Floor (campus map)
April 21 - May 9, Pocatello Camps
Beckley Nursing Building (campus map)
The National Library of Medicine produced Pictures of Nursing: The Zwerdling Postcard Collection, guest curated by historian and educator Julia Hallam, PhD (University of Liverpool). The traveling exhibition and companion website present a selection of postcards that span a century of images of nursing and nurses and investigates the hold these images exert on the public imagination—then and now.
The nursing imagery is informed by cultural values; ideas about women, men, and work; and by attitudes toward class, race, and national differences. Pictures of Nursing includes an education component with two university modules. A digital gallery features a curated selection of fully digitized items from the historical collections of the NLM, which are also available in their entirety in NLM Digital Collections.
Scottish rural visiting nurse Elizabeth McPhee, 1926. Courtesy National Library of Medicine.
A hundred years ago, rural visiting nurses provided the only medical care available for some isolated communities. They travelled by whatever means possible to attend to the sick. Liberated from the restrictive hierarchies of hospital life, visiting and community nurses pioneered public health movements in both the United Kingdom and United States.
Nurses at the George A. Brewster Nurse Training School, ca. 1908. Courtesy National Library of Medicine.
The George A. Brewster Hospital opened in 1901 to treat African American victims of the Great Fire of Jacksonville, Florida, which left then thousand people homeless.
Reproduction of Army Nurse Corps recruitment poster for World War II, 2001. Courtesy National Library of Medicine.
World War II created a huge demand for army nurses. By the end of the war, more than 59,000 nurses had worked close to the front lines, many were taken prisoner, and some died in battle. Their heroism, now recognized in subsequent conflicts, brought nursing new professional status and regard in American society.
The Greatest Mother in the World, ca. 1918. Courtesy National Library of Medicine.
The Red Cross offered opportunities to work worldwide; news of nursing in faraway places made nursing seem like an adventurous, rewarding career. The nurse cradling an injured soldier evokes associations of Mary, the greatest mother, mourning her crucified son, imagery that appealed to pious women searching for fulfillment outside the home.
The Great White Army, ca. 1915. Courtesy National Library of Medicine.
This promotional postcard produced as part of a fundraising campaign by the Italian Red Cross depicts the flags of the nations committed to supporting the Red Cross in 1915.
Star Trek, 1966-69. Courtesy National Library of Medicine.
From the 1920s-1960s, nursing figures in films, romantic novels, and career girl stories depicted their vocational service to a higher ideal. Nurse Christine Chapel (Majel Barrett Roddenberry, fourth from the left) was one of the main characters in the Star Trek series.
Operating team of the US Army Nurse Corps, 1951. Courtesy National Library of Medicine.
After World War II, nursing organizations began to show a more accurate picture of their profession, like this image from a commemorative series celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Army Nurse Corps.
The National Library of Medicine produced this exhibition and companion website.
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