The emergence of nurses in the health market in Paris in the eighteenth century

Abstract

At the end of the seventeenth century, the lexicographer Antoine Furetière limited the definition of nurses to those who cared for new mothers. However, in the private sphere, they cared for patients with all sorts of illnesses. It was only in 1816 that Doctor Marc proposed a precise definition of their activity. This paper examines the shift from nurses being considered as domestic healthcare workers to them being seen as skilled professionals whose role involved administering paramedical care.Because they were not part of a particular occupational community, nurses escaped the traditional categories of analysis of urban work. While the studies on health in the eighteenth century considered them to be like relations or friends of the patients, or to practice in hospitals, in the expenses lists recorded for post-mortem procedures they appear as new actors offering specific services.Nurses played a part in spreading a "culture of dependency," which was reflected in some medical texts and in some private writings by patients, making it possible to define the expectations and risks of the profession. The absence of testimonies from nurses themselves is revealing of their dependence on physicians.