Article ID: CBB001024902

Portrayals of Suffering: Perceptions of Trauma in the Writings of First World War Nurses and Volunteers (2010)

unapi

Hallett, Christine E. (Author)


Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin Canadienne d'Histoire de la Medecine
Volume: 27
Pages: 65--84


Publication Date: 2010
Edition Details: Part of a special section: “New Scholarship in Nursing History”
Language: English

The trauma-writings of World War I nurses have been identified as an important and influential corpus of early 20th-century works. Not only did the rediscovery of these writings in the later 20th century serve to recognize the importance of women's writings as part of the historical record, and identify certain female writers as some of the most important thinkers of the modernist movement; they also demonstrated the importance of the nursing perspective as one element of wartime experience. This paper considers a number of influential works written by both nurses and members of the Voluntary Aid Detachments (VAD) who assisted with nursing work during the war. The paper identifies how nurses and VADs presented their experiences of war trauma. It also considers how some writers strove to attach meaning to (or in some, cases expressed their sense of the meaninglessness of) the suffering caused by the war. The paper considers further how some nurses themselves experienced trauma as a result of their exposure to wartime work, and how some writers developed what are referred to as philosophies of suffering, in which they struggled to understand suffering as an element of human experience.

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Article Boschma, Geertje; Grypma, Sonya (2010) New Scholarship in Nursing History. Canadian Bulletin of Medical History/Bulletin Canadienne d'Histoire de la Medecine (p. 61). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001024902/

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Authors & Contributors
Hallett, Christine E.
Lee, Janet
Sharon Mascall-Dare
Magyar, László András
Jevremović, Petar
Dobson, Szabolcs
Concepts
Medicine and the military; medicine in war
World War I
Nurses and nursing
Medicine
Women in medicine
Science and war; science and the military
Time Periods
20th century, early
20th century
19th century
21st century
Places
United States
Europe
Great Britain
France
Canada
Southern states (U.S.)
Institutions
Red Cross Societies
International Red Cross
Canada. Canadian Army. Royal Canadian Army Medical Corps
American Red Cross
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