Nursing book examines profession
Upcoming book examines nursing in Nova Scotia during 1920-30s
SYDNEY — Barbara Keddy was cleaning a closet at her Halifax home when she came across a box of cassette tapes from 40 years ago.
While most people would probably have thrown them out, Keddy decided it was a good time to put those tapes of old interviews to good use. They're the basis of her latest book, “Nightingale's Vision: Nurses' Voices from the 1920s and 1930s,” which looks at nursing in this province in the early part of the last century.
“It's the usual COVID project,” said Keddy in a recent phone interview with the Cape Breton Post. “What else is there to do during COVID — I thought I may as well go for it.”
A book on Nova Scotia's nursing history is the perfect project for the 82-year-old Yarmouth native. She graduated as a registered nurse in 1959 from the Yarmouth School of Nursing, working at the Yarmouth Regional Hospital until 1971, when she moved to Halifax to continue her university studies.
She obtained a diploma in public health nursing (Dalhousie, 1973), a B.Sc. in nursing (Mount Saint Vincent, 1975), MA in sociology (1977) and PhD (1983) from Dalhousie. Since 1979, Keddy has held various academic positions in Dalhousie University's school of nursing, department of sociology and social anthropology and women's studies. She served as chairperson and board member for various professional associations and was the first national president and founder of the Nova Scotia Association for the History of Nursing. She has also written extensively for several academic journals.
And if that wasn't enough, Keddy is also the author of another book on nursing history, “The Lamp Was Heavy, Nova Scotia Nurses-in-Training in the 1950s,” as well as “Women and Fibromyalgia: Living with an Invisible Disease.”
TIMES REVEALED
The box of about 50 tapes were the result of extensive interviews Keddy had done in the 1980s with 40 nurses from around the province who had worked in Nova Scotia hospitals in the 1920s and 1930s. She had been commissioned by the Registered Nurses Association (now the Nova Scotia College of Nursing) to go around Nova Scotia to interview those nurses so their stories wouldn't be forgotten. Many of the people she interviewed were in their 80s at that point. None of the women interviewed were African Nova Scotian nor First Nations since those students were not accepted into schools of nursing at that time.
Once the interviews had been done and transcripts had been made, Keddy donated them to the Nova Scotia Archives where they are known as the Barbara Keddy Collection. It is often used by researchers who want to know more about nursing and women's lives at that time.
Keddy acknowledges it may have been less than 100 years ago but it was a completely different world back then. For one thing, nurses in the smaller hospitals often did double duty, dusting, mopping floors, scrubbing and generally keeping the facility clean — but for no extra money.
“They obviously did spend time looking after the patients but there were no antibiotics or insulin or even sulpha drugs at that time so they didn't have any medication to work with and certainly not any modern technology either,” Keddy said. “So a lot of the things they did with patients were rustic remedies. That chapter is probably one of the most interesting ones because it deals with what they used — maggots, leeches — there weren't many IVs and there wasn't much oxygen. It was considerably worse for Yarmouth and the Cape Breton areas — those were the smaller hospitals.”
Maggots were used because they eat dead tissue within a wound, which can prevent infection. Leeches have been used since biblical times to treat skin diseases, infections, dental problems and preventing blood clots. Folk remedies were sometimes the only thing available to treat a variety of dangerous diseases prevalent during those times.
“Scarlet fever, diphtheria, polio, the Spanish flu — these were all the epidemics that were going on around the same time — so they weren't dealing with COVID but they were dealing with multiple diseases and they didn't have any vaccines of course.”
SOCIETAL ISSUES
On top of the medical issues, there were also societal pressures and issues affecting health and health care.
“The nurses were dealing with the effects of the First World War because even though they may not have been nursing at that time, they would certainly be affected because of their upbringing during the war and then of course, the Great Depression. The people in Cape Breton and Yarmouth — all of the nurses said there was so much poverty and they were mostly from blue-collar backgrounds. They lived through great poverty and then they were all nursing during the Second World War, but they were nursing with very little equipment and very little nursing role models — there were lots of women who went to the U.S. to practise.”
Keddy has pretty much completed the book but is still looking for a publisher and a few photos of some of the Cape Breton nurses interviewed including Grace Bonner, born in 1914, trained at Sydney City Hospital; Clara Buffet, born in 1910, trained at Glace Bay General Hospital; Sr. David Marie Campbell, 1919, New Waterford General Hospital; Sr. Catherine DeRicci, 1897, Halifax Infirmary; Shirley Frier, 1922, Montreal General Hospital; Sadie Gillis, 1912, St. Rita's Hospital; Greta MacPherson, 1902, Glace Bay General Hospital; Flora MacDonald, 1909, Glace Bay General Hospital; Pearl Mitchell, 1914, Glace Bay General Hospital; Mary Murphy, 1906, New Waterford General Hospital and Elizabeth Robertson, 1907, Lowell General Hospital, U.S.A.
Anyone with photos or further information, can contact Keddy at bkeddy@dal.ca.