Summary The history of nursing education has often been portrayed as the subordination of nursing to medicine. Yet, as scholars are increasingly acknowledging, the professional boundaries between medicine and nursing were fluid in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, when both scientific knowledge and systems of nurse training were in flux. Through its focus on the role of medical practitioners in educating nurses in wound sepsis at four British hospitals between 1870 and 1920, this article attempts to further unite histories of medicine and nursing. It demonstrates that, in this period of uncertainty, the ideas and practices relating to antisepsis, asepsis and bacteriology disseminated to nursing probationers depended on the individual instructor. In demonstrating the localised nature of nursing education, this article argues that further analyses of clinical problems like wound sepsis may enable historians to more clearly identify the importance of professional collaboration within the hospital.

In 1880, the International Congress on the Education of the Deaf in Milan stipulated that speech should have 'preference' over signs in the education of deaf children, but the mode of achieving this effectively banned sign language. Endeavours to teach deaf children to articulate were not new, but this decision placed pressures on deaf institutions to favour the oral system of deaf communication over other methods. In Scotland, efforts were made to adopt oralism, but educators were faced with the reality that this was not good education practice for most pupils. This article will consider the responses of Scottish educators of deaf children from the 1870s until the beginning of the twentieth century. IntroductionIn 1880, the International Congress on the Education of the Deaf, meeting in Milan, passed several resolutions that were to have long-term effects on the deaf community and on the provision of communication skills and education. Two key resolutions stated:1. The convention, considering the incontestable superiority of speech over signs in restoring the deaf-mute to society and giving him a fuller knowledge of language, declares that the oral method should be preferred to that of signs in the education and instruction of deaf-mutes. The debate surrounding the efficacy of the manual method of communication (sign language and finger-spelling) and the oral method (lip-reading and articulation)

No abstract

This article examines two institutions which were established in Scotland specifically for the accommodation of mentally-impaired children: Baldovan Asylum near Dundee and the 'Scottish National Institution for the Education of Imbecile Children' in Larbert, Stirlingshire. It surveys the aims and agendas of the institutions in the spheres of residential childcare, mental health, and education and training. It compares the admission regimes of these institutions and considers whether they complemented one another in serving an unsatisfied demand for places, or whether they were in competition for admissions, staff and charitable support. The survey covers the period from the opening of both institutions to the implementation of the Mental Deficiency Act of 1913 which required the (re)certification of all children.

No abstract