Say Little, Do Much

Nursing, Nuns, and Hospitals in the Nineteenth Century
Nearly half a century before Florence Nightingale became a legendary figure for her pioneering work in the nursing trade, nursing nuns made significant but little-known accomplishments in the field.

In the nineteenth century, more than a third of American hospitals were established and run by women with religious vocations. In Say Little, Do Much, Sioban Nelson casts light on the work of these women’s religious communities. According to Nelson, the popular view that nursing invented itself in the second half of the nineteenth century is historically inaccurate and dismissive of the major advances in the care of the sick as a serious and skilled activity, an activity that originated in seventeenth-century France with Vincent de Paul’s Daughters of Charity.
In this comparative, contextual, and critical work, Nelson demonstrates how modern nursing developed from the compl