In 1925 Mary Breckinridge (1881-1965) founded the Frontier Nursing
Service (FNS), a public health organization in eastern Kentucky
providing nurses on horseback to reach families who otherwise would
not receive health care. Through this public health organization,
she introduced nurse-midwifery to the United States and created a
highly successful, cost-effective model for rural health care
delivery that has been replicated throughout the world.
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.