Nurses and Doctors 1660-1820: An Uneasy Alliance

Nurses working before the period of reform in the 1850s have popularly been written off as drunk and incompetent – but does this stereotype hold up to scrutiny?

This lecture Professor Alannah Tomkins will consider the lived experiences of women employed as nurses in the years between the final outbreak of plague and the birth of Florence Nightingale, and their interactions with male medical practitioners. The two occupational groups formed an uneasy and unstable alliance in private, in both domestic and institutional care settings, but public exposure generally saw this alliance break down. This lecture will also explore what the nurses might have thought about their problematic position in the workplace.

Chair Alison J Tierney CBE FRCN

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Professor Alannah Tomkins is a Professor of Social History at Keele University and author of Medical misadventure in an age of professionalisation, 1780-1890.

Alison J Tierney CBE FRCN is a retired Professor of Nursing Research at The University of Edinburgh, former director of the Nursing Research Unit at The University of Edinburgh and former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Advanced Nursing.