Nursing Stories

by Ann Monroe Currah (Editor), Helen Dore Boylston (Contributor), Monica Dickens (Contributor)

Contents:
The Miracle
Unqualified Diagnosis
A Clinical Examination
Taming an Invisible Killer
Mark of the Beast
Wrong Foot
Doctor in the Jungle
Christmas on Duty
Prince Andrey's Wound
Some Words with a Mummy
Catherine in Childbirth

351 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1979

Reviews

[Vicki · Rating 1 out of 5]

An almost total waste of time. I kept on reading hoping to find one or two stories worth my time. These stories were chapters lifted from novels and some had no meaning when out of context. The majority of the “stories” had nothing to do with nursing, most dealt with medicine or the scientific medicine, a few were pure fantasy. I do not like fantasy so those were the most worthless inclusions in this collection. The only redeemable stories were about Pasteur’s discovery of the smallpox vaccine and the “story” about Catherine’s death from Hemingway’s A Farewell to Arms. I read this book as I have held onto it for over 35 years in hopes of finding time to read it. Well I did, now on to a hopefully better read.

[Glen U · Rating 2 out of 5]

The main thrust of this collection of short stories and excerpts is about...wait for it... nursing. I originally came upon this book after reading some facts and details about P. D. James. This book was mentioned as a source of a quote in the subsequent bibliography of the article. When I researched this collection more, I discovered that there were also pieces from Norman Collins, Rudyard Kipling (a favorite of mine), Leo Tolstoy, Edgar Allan Poe, Arthur Hailey, Joan Aiken, and Ernest Hemingway. Sadly, the book only used excerpts from some the aforementioned authors taken from some of their more famous full length works. There were short stories from Edgar Allan Poe and Rudyard Kipling that I had never read, though, so that did make the perusal of this book more palatable. As for the rest of the stories in this collection, meh. Not that I don't appreciate and am thankful for the nursing profession, this was not the book I expected. Truthfully, I only read three of the stories in this book, (the Poe, the Kipling and one other),having either read the full novels of the others or are going to read them. Not a book I would recommend, but not a waste of time either.