BMJ  2005;331 (10 December), doi:10.1136/bmj.331.7529.0-f

Editor's choice

Cure or care?

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Dogmatism is something we try to avoid at the BMJ, whether our own or other people's. How far we succeed may be open to question. Our predecessors, however, suffered no such qualms, if an editorial published in 1880 is anything to go by. "The nurse," it says "must be a person who pays blind obedience to [doctors'] orders." Admirably clear cut, but as Nick Black points out in his article on the rise and demise of the hospital (p 1394), the apparent confidence of these words hides layers of antagonism and insecurity.

At the end of the 19th century, medicine and nursing were in the grip of conflict. Doctors feared that nurses were undermining their authority—fears that were fuelled, according to Black, by social insecurities based around class and sex. Nurses tended to be well educated with independent incomes. As Black puts it, "men had little or . . . [Full text of this article]

Fiona Godlee, editor

(fgodlee@bmj.com)


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