"I approached the study of historical and contemporary nurses with my sleeves rolled up, pencil sharpened, and camera loaded. What draws a person to those who are ill and keeps us at the bedside? Every question I asked the nurses, I asked myself. Heart first, I plunged into stories about historical nurses whose names I had never heard. Somehow, they chose me as the vehicle for retelling their remarkable story. As I conducted interview after interview, I found threads of sameness in the the lives of my nurses. In childhood, illness and often death was a member of their family. They had...