Abstract
This essay focuses on the “epidemic notes” of frontline healthcare workers as a form of qualitative observation that can potentiate public intelligence about emerging infectious disease crises. As one coterie of healthcare workers, registered nurses who write about frontline experiences can immerse nonexperts in an epidemic sensorium, and productively involve them in evolving medical advisories and health policies. I draw on print and oral history archives of registered nurses at the frontlines of the typhoid and yellow fever (1898–1901), influenza (1918–1919), and HIV/AIDS (1981–present) pandemics to analyze epidemic notes as an incremental, situated, and provisional knowledge-making in the face of radical uncertainty.
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