Nurse Memoirs from the Great War in Britain, France, and Germany, 1st ed. 2021 Palgrave Studies in Literature, Science and Medicine Series

Nurse Memoirs from the Great War in Britain, France, and Germany examines an understudied corpus of memoirs in English, French, and German stemming from the unprecedented involvement of women in the war effort. Jerry Palmer considers the memoirs in relationship to public opinion, collective memory and other women?s writing about the war. Through close-readings of the memoirs and their contexts, the book identifies themes present in the texts and considers the nurse memoir as rhetoric?examining to what extent the texts are promoting or countering arguments in the public sphere about their involvement or more widely about women?s position in society. Palmer explores the multiple contexts related to the nurse memoirs, including public response to volunteer wartime nursing, the organisation of the military health services of the three nations and their conduct in the war, and changes in the post-war organization of public health services and the professionalization of nursing.

1. Introduction.- 2. Hospitals and Nursing Before the Great War.- 3. Nurses and the Military Medical Services in the Great War.- 4. Women and War Work (1): Debates and Issues.- 5. Women and War Work (2): Nursing.- 6. The Nurse Memoirs (1).- 7. The Nurse Memoirs (2).- 8. The Nurse Memoirs (3): Nurse Memoirs in Nazi Germany.- 9. The Rhetorical Strategies of Nurse Memoirs.- 10. After the War: Nursing Reform and Collective Memory.- 11. Conclusion.

Provides a wide-ranging look at nurses’ memoirs and their relationship to public opinion and women’s rights Takes a comparative approach to studying wartime nursing and changes in the military medical services Contributes to the study of the medical humanities, history of medicine, memoir, and memory