ADDA ELDRIDGE: FOUNDING MOTHER OF ILLINOIS PROFESSIONAL NURSING

The story of Adda Eldredge, Founding Mother of Illinois Professional Nursing does not include battlefields or the hospitals near them, like the stories of Florence Nightingale, Dorothea Dix or Mary Ann Bickerdyke.  Her work to professionalize nursing was in the political arena. Her success is astonishing when one considers for a moment that when she […]

Dorothea Dix: Superintendent of Civil War Nurses

While the Founding Mother of professional nursing, Florence Nightingale, whose birthday is the midpoint of National Nurses Week, was laboring in the Crimean War and establishing her nursing school in London, trouble was brewing the United States. As in Britain, it would be war to move forward nursing as a profession. The recognition of nursing […]