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A Cultural History of the Nurse's Uniform By Christina Bates (Gatineau, Quebec, Canada: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2012) (270 pages; $39.95 paper, in English, also available in French)
When I was a teenager, my sister and I volunteered to be candy stripers at Our Lady of Peace Home, a facility for terminal cancer patients in St. Paul, Minnesota. Each time upon arrival, we donned pink-and-white-striped pinafore-like garments in which we performed our duties. Neither of us lasted very long as candy stripers, crushing whatever aspirations our mother had for us to study nursing in college. I had forgotten about that garment until I read A Cultural History of the Nurse's Uniform . Now I know that our pink-andwhite- striped outfits-which had evolved from the pink uniforms of a legion of student nurses-identified us to patients, staff, and visitors as auxiliary personnel.
In A Cultural History of the Nurse's Uniform , Christina Bates chronicles the development and history of nurses' uniforms. The focus is firmly on Canada, although this is not indicated in the title or on the back cover. At the time of publication, Bates was curator of the History of Canadian Home Life at the Canadian Museum of Civilization. Her interest in nurses' uniforms began in 1999 when the Canadian Nursing History Collection entered the museum. The collection...