“County Nurses in Important Work”: Female Caregivers in Dubuque, Iowa, During the 1918 Epidemics of Polio and Influenza

The Dubuque community followed national patterns regarding their experience with the influenza pandemic of 1918, but a polio epidemic during the summer of 1918 primed the populace to take the epidemic seriously upon its arrival in the city and to follow public health regulations without complaint. Because of the nursing school established in 1900 by the Sisters of Mercy and a series of public health progressive reforms, professional nurses and the women they trained became essential to the city’s response to these epidemics. In fact, nursing care proved more important than the talents of a physician, but because of the war, Dubuque faced a nursing shortage. Through the Red Cross and the Visiting Nurse Association, women volunteered to assist the households where entire families suffered with illness or ill parents could not care for their children. The newspapers published guidelines instructing how to nurse loved ones in the home, while the Sisters of Charity made nutritious broth and distributed it to ill families. Although male city officials and physicians made decisions during the epidemics, women—as professionals and female caregivers—literally nursed the community back to health.