Gerard M. Fealy is Professor of Nursing and Associate Dean for Research at the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Health Systems, University College DublinChristine E. Hallett is Professor of Nursing History at the School of Nursing, Midwifery and Social Work, University of Manchester, and is Director of the UK Centre for the History of NursingSusanne Malchau Dietz is Historian in Residence at the Danish Museum of Nursing History, Kolding, Denmark

• Introduction: Histories of nursing practice – Christine Hallett, Gerard Fealy Part I: Care and cure in nursing work1. Baby and infant healthcare in Dresden, 1897–1930 – Bettina Blessing2. The taste of war: the meaning of food to New Zealand and Australian nurses far from home in World War One, 1915–18 – Pamela J. Wood and Sara Knight3. ‘In the company of those similarly afflicted’: the sanatorium patient and sanatorium nursing, c.1908–52 – Martin S. McNamara and Gerard Fealy4. 'Hurting and caring': nursing burned children in the Chicago School fire disaster, 1958 – Barbara Brodie5. A poverty of leadership: nursing older people in English hospitals, 1945–80 – Jane Brooks6. Beyond the cuckoo’s nest: Nurses and ECT in Dutch psychiatry, 1940–2010 – Geertje BoschmaPart II: Public health and nursing work7. The cholera epidemic of 1892 and its impact on modernising public health and nursing in Hamburg – Mathilde Hackmann8. ‘Some kindred form of medical social work’: defining the boundaries of social work, health visiting, public health nursing in Europe, 1918–25 – Jaime Lapeyre9. ‘Community health care’: Struggles and conflicts of an emerging public health system in the United States, 1915–45 – Rima Apple10. Nurses in schools, coal towns and migrant camps: bringing health care to rural America, 1900–50 – John Kirchgessner, Arlene Keeling and Mary GibsonIndex