ABSTRACT
Nursing tends to be less well-documented than medicine. As discussed later in this chapter, this has a good deal to do with assumptions about its nature. For centuries it tended to be regarded as one aspect of the normal womanly role, and even if a degree of learned skill might be conceded, the learning would largely have taken place orally and by informal apprenticeship experience. It involved physical, hands-on competence rather than qualifications associated with formal learning and scholarship.
