Oslerian pathology

developed midwifery, that the U.S.A. had developed nursing, but that Britain had managed to combine them in the way that was needed. Accordingly, she and her nurses took midwifery training in London. But she was also convinced that the nurse-midwife could and should combine sick nursing and preventive work, something that many Britons, then and now, see as far from ideal. We could do worse than to follow up these themes with systematic, comparative historical work, adding some clarification perhaps, to current debates about the work of the community nurse. Mary Breckenridge herself started by studying the Highlands and Islands Medical and Nursing Service. We could do worse than to follow her example. Celia Davies Department of Sociology University of Warwick