Should nurses practice therapeutic touch? Should nursing schools teach therapeutic touch? .

This article argues that in the current setting of nursing practice, therapeutic touch should be treated as a religious practice. The article examines the religious sources of the ideas and documents the connection with the teachings of particular religious groups. Recognizing therapeutic touch as a religious issue requires new kinds of approaches in the practice and teaching of therapeutic touch in nursing.

Lesbianism in China.

Lesbianism in China has a long but usually hidden history. This paper examines the historical and literary sources of the past to illustrate the history of lesbianism and then turns to a survey of lesbianism in the China of today. As in the past, lesbianism remains more or less hidden, and comes to light only occasionally. Data for contemporary China comes from a visit to an institution for delinquent young women, recent police records, and contemporary fiction. It has only been in the past 4 or 5 years that it was possible to talk about lesbianism and most lesbians are fearful of becoming identified.

Nightingale, nursing and harassment.

Nineteenth century nursing schools as well as schools during the first half of the twentieth century had severe restrictions on the freedom of activity of their students. Students were required to live in nursing homes, be in their rooms at certain hours, dress in very restrictive uniforms and ever strive to be ladylike. Most of these requirements date to Florence Nightingale and were essentially nineteenth century methods to avoid the problems of sexual harassment.

Male transsexualism in mainland China.

Though there have been many studies about transsexualism in the West, as well as other parts of the world, nothing has been reported for mainland China. This is mainly because communication about any sexual phenomenon in China is heavily censored. However, the first author of this paper had either written or personal contact with seven transsexuals in China. This study summarizes general information available on the seven, reports in detail on two cases where there was considerable correspondence, and summarizes the one case of transsexual surgery known to have taken place in China in recent years. Since these cases have not been publicized in China, it is hoped that one result of publication of this information will be to open up a dialogue on the subject with the Chinese.

American nursing leaders: a comparative study of achievement.

Biographies of 177 American nursing leaders who were born before 1890 or deceased by 1988 were analyzed to identify commonalities in their backgrounds. The sample included the dominant figures in American nursing between 1870 and about 1940. Members of the group tended to be well educated. A significant minority were teachers before they became nurses. They tended to be from the Eastern Seaboard, and their higher education was very likely to have been at Columbia University Teachers College. When the backgrounds of these nursing achievers were compared with the backgrounds of significant achievers of Renaissance Italy, 18th-century Scotland, and a group of 19th-century German Jews, similarities in background characteristics were found. Members of all three samples were well educated for their era, they tended to come from middle- or upper-middle-class families, and all of the groups were marked by longevity.