Systems are the way we track and keep information. However just like people, institutions conceive and use information differently! Learning them and discovering how they connect can take time.

There are large gaps in our awareness of the role and actions of women. A ‘gendered assumption’ has existed in Western Civilization since the beginning of it; that women: were inferior, not to be trusted and powerless (Mary Beard explains this phenomena brilliantly). Since women’s thoughts and actions were not considered significant, they were neither acclaimed or recorded. As a result women’s role in history has been overlooked and their contributions undervalued. Re-tracing this “role” is important to really understanding our current society and civilization.

I am on a journey to connect and understand the ideas and actions of women over time. How can we understand how women shaped the system of health care in the United States? They have obviously used it! Less obvious is how they have influenced it.

Working in multiple archives has proved somewhat challenging. So I have decided to pursue this digital project in a new way — contextually! Starting from searching the archives directly, for connections linking specific physical evidence between Cleveland’s Western Reserve Historical Society and the Smithsonian Division of Science and Medicine, has not yielded any results. The next iteration of this project is going to begin with specific Cleveland women who were involved in changes in medicine and health care.

Women like: Rowland & Telkes, Dr. Sarah Marcus and Lulu Greves and the hundreds of nurses who cared for Clevelanders.

I have not located Drs Rowland or Agatha Hodginsm Nurse Anesthetist who worked with the Lakeside Unit in WWI (see Andre’ Van Zundert’s page) in the Smithsonian Database. It is possible to learn more about them from artifacts and exhibits such as Women in World War I . They would have worn uniforms similar to these:

It is a start to understanding these women and weaving the story of their past.