In the late 1970s, when I first began to gather together the authors whose essays would later appear in Rewriting Nursing History,1 I found myself among others who experienced the same kinds of dissatisfactions with the history of nursing that I did. With the arrogance of the young, we believed we were at the cutting edge, at the start of something new. The judgments of nurse historians have been kind; they seem to have confirmed us in the passions we displayed. Yet the themes, research designs, and methods that are in place today were simply not visible on the horizon. And perhaps it is quite right that that is so.
A critical reflection on what has transpired over the intervening …