First Sentence

"Revisionist historical scholars have lately expanded the explanations of nursing's conception beyond "the great woman theory" of Nightingale's genius to suggest that American nursing's roots emanate from a blending of the ideology of domesticity with that of medical science (O'Brien 1987; Lynaugh and Fagin 1988); that nursing is a story of women workers' rationalizing the service industry (Melosh 1982); that nursing is the product of a group of enlightened leaders intent on reform and professionalization (Christy 1969); that nursing developed from the growth of paternalistic hospitals eager to manipulate females and to profit from nurses' work (Ashley 1976); that nursing emerged from interacting social and economic needs related to the care of the ill (Rosenberg 1987); that nursing became visible when philanthrophic women and physicians demanded that hospitals employ "lady" nurses (Mottus 1981); and that nursing gained its social and moral justification from its obligation to care (Reverby 1987)."