Harbor of Hope: Nurses of the Boston Floating Hospital

Overview of the Monograph

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In Harbor of Hope: Nurses of the Boston Floating Hospital, distinguished nursing historian Arlene W. Keeling illuminates the vital, yet frequently neglected, history of hospital boats and paediatric healthcare innovation in the United States. Spanning the period from the institution’s founding in 1894 to the vessel’s destruction by fire in 1927, the monograph provides an authoritative account of clinical dedication amidst an urban public health crisis.

Nursing Innovation and Infant Care on Boston Harbor

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During the late nineteenth century, urban centres such as Boston faced catastrophic rates of infant mortality. In the city’s most impoverished quarters, nearly one in five infants perished before their first birthday, primarily from virulent gastrointestinal infections caused by unpasteurised and contaminated cow’s milk during the summer heat. Inspired by hospital boats operating in New York, civic reformers launched the Boston Floating Hospital in July 1894 to offer sick infants and exhausted mothers clean ocean breezes and medical intervention away from tenement conditions.

Keeling demonstrates that whilst medical officers directed clinical trials and clean-milk initiatives, it was the graduate nurses who translated medical theory into lifesaving reality. Providing continuous, minute-to-minute bedside nursing, these women administered feedings, meticulously monitored clinical responses, managed complex paediatric therapies, and educated anxious mothers. Through skill, perseverance, and systematic clinical observation, the nurses of the Floating Hospital reshaped infant welfare and laid the groundwork for modern paediatric nursing practice.

Historiographical Significance

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By placing clinical nursing care at the centre of hospital history, Harbor of Hope offers essential insights into institutional governance, early child health advocacy, and the professionalisation of nursing in North America. Scholars of medical and institutional history can explore related studies and reviews across our wider Publications catalogue as well as in past issues within the EAHN Bulletin Archive .

Purchase and Availability

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Harbor of Hope: Nurses of the Boston Floating Hospital is available to order online via Amazon and directly from the University of Massachusetts Press .