Rockefeller Archive Center

Rockefeller Archive Center Research Reports are created by recipients of research travel stipends and by many others who have conducted research at the RAC. The reports demonstrate the breadth of the RAC's archival holdings, particularly in the study of philanthropy and its effects. Read more about the history of philanthropy at resource.rockarch.org. Also, see the RAC Bibliography of Scholarship, a comprehensive online database of publications citing RAC archival collections.

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Overlooked Soldiers in the Cancer Wars: Nurses and Cancer, 1880-1950

January 1, 2003

The history of humanity's continuing battle with cancer has been extensively examined in lay and scholarly literature. Fear of this dreaded disease has resulted in a compelling interest in the experiences of those who suffer from it, their families, and their doctors. Yet the work of nurses, although at the forefront of the war on cancer, has been curiously disregarded. Nurses are a fixture in any serious illness but their work readily blends into the disease milieu, inconspicuous although essential. Several factors may explain this phenomenon. Formerly nurses, as predominantly female, have been disregarded when traditional white male-focused history was written. Nurses' highly traditional feminine role also failed to ignite much interest from women's and social historians. Nurses were not autonomous practitioners; indeed, unquestioning obedience to male physician authority was demanded. However, nurses' work presents a wealth of intimate and socially important human stories.

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