Atchison Velta (1 results)

Flexible Card. Condition: Very Good. The post-WW I photo album and scrap book of American Registered Nurse, Velta M. Atchison. Compiled by her during a time of transition in the American health care system, when delivery of maternal services were changing to a home based, mother and baby centric system, from a more rigid institutional one. (see Ahma & Co dot com "History of Postpartum Care in the U.S.) These photographs seemingly document postpartum home care visits and the personal life of an RN working in both Maternity and in Midwife roles. Her family, coworkers and various Maternity Hospitals, are also represented. The collection of photos is further linked by the many named and dated photos, ephemera and birth announcements at the rear of the album. The earliest item we find is a birth announcement dated "July 27 - '18" for Dean Hughbert McAnally, who weighed in at 8 lbs. One card quotes Florence Nightingale viz. "The opinions of others concerning you depend not at all, or very little, upon what you are, but upon what they are." A string-bound, oblong 8vo size album (8 inches tall), with 50 leaves containing 221 B&W silver gelatin, vernacular snap shots and 60 birth announcements and related ephemera, most dating 1922-29. Many items are pasted in with some being loosely mounted, a few ephemeral items loose from their mounts. Included is photocopy of the 1940 US Federal Census where Mrs. Velta M. Atchison is shown as being originally from Iowa, currently 44 years old at the time of the Census, and an RN in Denver, Colorado. An intriguing album, with good research potential.