Mary Breckinridge
The Frontier Nursing Service and Rural Health in Appalachia
Melanie Beals Goan
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 09/2012
Pages: 360
Subject: Biography and Autobiography, Medical, History
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9.78E+12
eBook ISBN: 9781469606644
DESCRIPTION
In this first comprehensive biography of the FNS founder, Melanie Beals Goan provides a revealing look at the challenges Breckinridge faced as she sought reform and the contradictions she embodied. Goan explores Breckinridge's perspective on gender roles, her charisma, her sense of obligation to live a life of service, her eccentricity, her religiosity, and her application of professionalized, science-based health care ideas. Highly intelligent and creative, Breckinridge also suffered from depression, was by modern standards racist, and fought progress as she aged--sometimes to the detriment of those she served.
Breckinridge optimistically believed that she could change the world by providing health care to women and children. She ultimately changed just one corner of the world, but her experience continues to provide powerful lessons about the possibilities and the limitations of reform.