164: Nursing Through the Ages, Part 1: The Dark Origins of Nursing

Hometown History

Long before starched whites and stethoscopes, nursing grew out of medieval convents, overcrowded workhouses, and disease-ridden wards where desperate women labored with little training and even less respect. In this debut episode, we trace caregiving’s shift from a humble act of charity to a grim last-resort job for society’s most marginalized—setting the stage for an unlikely revolution in health care. You’ll meet the anonymous nuns who braved plague, the urban nurses who faced four-times-higher mortality rates than their peers, and the social forces that branded them unskilled “angels of mercy.” These gripping early chapters reveal why hospitals were once feared death traps—and why the profession so badly needed a visionary with a lamp to lead it into the light.

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