Historia de la enfermería

Caring for the sick has accompanied humanity since its origins. The oldest images in cave art, ancient medical texts, and contemporary hospital organization all bear witness to one constant: there has always been someone willing to alleviate pain, protect life, and accompany those in illness. Throughout history, figures and communities have emerged who embodied this essential task: the deaconesses of early Christianity, the parabalani who cared for the sick during epidemics, Rufaida Al-Aslamiya and the birth of Islamic nursing, Beatriz Galindo and the Hospital de La Latina, the Spanish nurses Andrés Fernández and Simón López, the Daughters of Charity of Saint Vincent de Paul, the Order of Saint John of God, enslaved nurses, Florence Nightingale and the Scientific Revolution, Virginia Henderson and the consolidation of the profession. This book reconstructs the evolution of a vocation that has spanned millennia marked by wars, health crises, and social transformations. A form of care that evolved from intuition and compassion to a structured, scientific knowledge essential to modern medicine. With historical rigor and a humanistic perspective, José Ramón Alonso shows how each era shaped the way the most vulnerable are cared for.