Hearts of Wisdom : American Women Caring for Kin, 1850-1940 / Emily K. Abel.
2009
R727.47 A24 2000eb
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Details
Title
Hearts of Wisdom : American Women Caring for Kin, 1850-1940 / Emily K. Abel.
Author
Abel, Emily K., author.
ISBN
9780674020023
Published
Cambridge, MA : : Harvard University Press, [2009]
Copyright
©2002
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource (336 p.)
Other Standard Identifiers
10.4159/9780674020023 doi
Call Number
R727.47 A24 2000eb
Dewey Decimal Classification
362.10820973
Summary
The image of the female caregiver holding a midnight vigil at the bedside of a sick relative is so firmly rooted in our collective imagination we might assume that such caregiving would have attracted the scrutiny of numerous historians. As Emily Abel demonstrates in this groundbreaking study of caregiving in America across class and ethnic divides and over the course of ninety years, this has hardly been the case. While caring for sick and disabled family members was commonplace for women in nineteenth- and early-twentieth-century America, that caregiving, the caregivers' experience of it, and the medical profession's reaction to it took diverse and sometimes unexpected forms. A complex series of historical changes, Abel shows, has profoundly altered the content and cultural meaning of care. Hearts of Wisdom is an immersion into that "world of care." Drawing on antebellum slave narratives, white farm women's diaries, and public health records, Abel puts together a multifaceted picture of what caregiving meant to American women--and what it cost them--from the pre-Civil War years to the brink of America's entry into the Second World War. She shows that caregiving offered women an arena in which experience could be parlayed into expertise, while at the same time the revolution in bacteriology and the transformation of the formal health care system were weakening women's claim to that expertise.Table of Contents: Acknowledgments Introduction Part One: 1850-1890 1. "Hot Flannels, Hot Teas, and a Great Deal of Care": Emily Hawley Gillespie and Sarah Gillespie, 1858-1888 2. An Overview of Nineteenth-Century Caregiving 3. "Tried at the Quilting Bees": Con'icts between "Old Ladies" and Aspiring Professionals Part Two: 1890-1940 4. A "Terrible and Exhausting" Struggle: Martha Shaw Farnsworth, 1890-1924 5. "Just as You Direct": Caregiver Translations of Medical Authority 6. Negotiating Public Health Directives: Poor New Yorkers at the Turn of the Century Reviews of this book: This excellent historical review of female caregiving within families as a transformative experience identifies conditions that make this form of human connectedness rewarding and meaningful.--J.E. Thompson, ChoiceThis is a breathtaking work in terms of its depth and its breadth. Emily Abel's research is impressive in its time frame, wide range of topics, and wonderful source material. What she has given us, for the first time, is a full-length study of the female support network, not only for childbirth but for a whole range of health issues. With her pleasing writing style and clear, readable prose, she gives us much more than mere glimpses of anonymous people--she provides the reader with a sense of the texture of human lives.--Susan L. Smith, University of AlbertaThe reader of Hearts of Wisdom is surprised by the topic and content, but is left with the sense that the most central story of human possibility has been left out of all other history books. The work offers a substantive contribution to history, feminist scholarship, caregiving professions, and informal caregivers.--Patricia Benner, R.N., Ph.D, University of California, San Francisco
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Access limited to authorized users.
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Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
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text file PDF
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Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 18. Sep 2023)
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Harvard University Press eBook Package Backlist 2000-2013
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Table of Contents
Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: 1850-1890
1 "Hot Flannels, Hot Teas, and a Great Deal of Care": Emily Hawley Gillespie and Sarah Gillespie, 1858-1888
2 An Overview of Nineteenth-Century Caregiving
3 "Tried at the Quilting Bees": Conflicts between "Old Ladies" and Aspiring Professionals
Part Two: 1890-1940
4 A "Terrible and Exhausting" Struggle: Martha Shaw Farnsworth, 1890-1924
5 "Just as You Direct": Caregiver Translations of Medical Authority
6 Negotiating Public Health Directives: Poor New Yorkers at the Turn of the Century
7 Caregiving during the Great Depression: Mothers Seeking Children's Health Care and American Indians Encountering Public Health Nurses
8 "Very Dear to My Heart": Confronting Labels of Feeblemindedness and Epilepsy
9 "Like Ordinary Hearing Children": Raising Offspring according to Oralist Dictates
Conclusion: The Uses of the Past
Notes
Index
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One: 1850-1890
1 "Hot Flannels, Hot Teas, and a Great Deal of Care": Emily Hawley Gillespie and Sarah Gillespie, 1858-1888
2 An Overview of Nineteenth-Century Caregiving
3 "Tried at the Quilting Bees": Conflicts between "Old Ladies" and Aspiring Professionals
Part Two: 1890-1940
4 A "Terrible and Exhausting" Struggle: Martha Shaw Farnsworth, 1890-1924
5 "Just as You Direct": Caregiver Translations of Medical Authority
6 Negotiating Public Health Directives: Poor New Yorkers at the Turn of the Century
7 Caregiving during the Great Depression: Mothers Seeking Children's Health Care and American Indians Encountering Public Health Nurses
8 "Very Dear to My Heart": Confronting Labels of Feeblemindedness and Epilepsy
9 "Like Ordinary Hearing Children": Raising Offspring according to Oralist Dictates
Conclusion: The Uses of the Past
Notes
Index