This oral history shares stories of Kentucky nurses—from frontier births to emergency rooms and from the early twentieth-century to the present day. From frontier times to the present day, Kentucky nurses have served with intelligence and energy, always ensuring that their patients received the best available care. Folklorist and oral historian William Lynwood Montell collects nearly two hundred stories from these hard-working men and women in Tales from Kentucky Nurses. From humorous anecdotes to spine-chilling coincidences, tragic circumstances, and heartwarming encounters, the tales in this lively volume are recorded exactly as they were told to Montell. This collection features anecdotes from the famous Frontier Nursing Service, which provided essential care to families in remote areas of the state and whose leader, Mary Breckinridge, is remembered for her wit and kindness. In addition, Montell's interviewees share ghost stories and describe folk remedies like the practice of placing an axe under a woman's pillow during labor to cut the pain. These firsthand accounts not only pay homage to an underappreciated profession but also preserve important aspects of Kentucky's history not likely to be recorded elsewhere.

The nearly 350 humorous, heartwarming, and sometimes tragic accounts presented in William Lynwood Montell's latest book, Tales from Kentucky Doctors, offer an unusual perspective on the culture and tradition of Kentucky health-care practice. From the laughable to the laudable, Tales from Kentucky Doctors present illuminating portraits of doctors and patients, drawing stories from physicians with lifetimes of experience serving Kentucky families. In chapter 2, doctors recall the successes and failures that shaped their early careers. For Dr. Baretta R. Casey of Hazard, becoming a doctor was a difficult journey. Already married and with a child, Casey enrolled in college at age thirty, later completed medical school, and began a successful career as a family practitioner in the 1990s. Though patient visitations and doctors' prescriptions are recorded on account ledgers, personal relationships and memories are not part of medical records. The section "Personal Practice" gives a glimpse of the intimate relationships doctors form with their communities. "I doubt that any individual was nearer to the family than the family doctor," Dr. W. L. Tyler says in one story. For many towns, family physicians were heroes. Dr. James S. Brashear relates the challenges of practicing in Central City, a coal mining town, recalling an incident in which he saved the lives of two miners. Handed down to Montell in the oral tradition, the tales presented in this collection represent every part of the state. Personal experiences, humorous anecdotes, and local legends make it a fascinating panorama of Kentucky physicians and of the communities they served.

“The book lets us see the human side of physicians—the humorous, the heartwarming—the tradition of health care in Kentucky.” —The Harrodsburg Herald From the laughable to the laudable, Tales from Kentucky Doctors present illuminating portraits of doctors and patients, drawing stories from physicians with lifetimes of experience serving Kentucky families. Doctors recall the successes and failures that shaped their early careers. For Dr. Baretta R. Casey of Hazard, becoming a doctor was a difficult journey. Already married and with a child, Casey enrolled in college at age thirty, later completed medical school, and began a successful career as a family practitioner in the 1990s. Though patient visitations and doctors’ prescriptions are recorded on account ledgers, personal relationships and memories are not part of medical records. The section “Personal Practice” gives a glimpse of the intimate connection that doctors form with their communities. For many towns, family physicians were heroes. Dr. James S. Brashear relates the challenges of practicing in Central City, a coal mining town, recalling an incident in which he saved the lives of two miners. Handed down to Montell in the oral tradition, the tales presented in this collection represent every part of the state. Personal experiences, humorous anecdotes, and local legends make it a fascinating panorama of Kentucky physicians and of the communities they served. “Abounds with interesting and amusing anecdotes about life in rural Kentucky. For those of us who grew up during these times, it brings back fond memories of good times and bad.” —Bowling Green Daily News

Introduces readers to prison workers as they share stories, debate the role of corrections in American racial politics and social justice, and talk about the important function of humor in their jobs.

When she wrote her autobiography, Wide Neighborhoods, in 1952, Mary Breckinridge reflected on what her beloved Frontier Nursing Service had achieved since its founding in 1925. She compared FNS to a tree, a metaphor that aptly described the service's steadfast and powerful roots in the mountains of Eastern Kentucky, as well as the plentiful yield of healthy babies delivered by the Frontier nurses. Breckinridge was equally proud of another of the Frontier Nursing Service's products: the hundreds of graduates of the Frontier Graduate School of Midwifery (later called the Frontier School of Midwifery and Family Nursing and today known as Frontier Nursing University). Through their subsequent work in the United States and around the world, Frontier alumni constitute a significant portion of the Frontier legacy. Indeed, through their care of thousands of women, babies, and families, the graduates have provided "shade and fruit" to many. The stories and experiences of the early Frontier graduates -- those who attended the School in its first 50 years -- provide a fascinating glimpse into a part of nurse-midwifery history that has heretofore not been given significant attention, and therefore is the purpose of this book.