Brooks J E
School of Healthcare Studies, Leeds University, UK.
Int Hist Nurs J. 2000 Spring;5(2):36-41.
Historians of nursing are presented with the formidable task of attempting to decipher the history of a group about whom the documents are scarce, and who have rarely, if ever, written about themselves. It can be rather like a lottery searching through archives for documentary evidence, the task is hardly more tractable when the archival material does not exist. It is hard enough to decipher the ideas of our predecessors, virtually impossible when these ideas were written by some other than to whom they refer. This, it could be argued, prevents historians of nursing from undertaking the sort of history expounded by the followers of the positivist tradition, including Geoffrey Elton. For Elton, the documents were everything, and that they above all else should be the point of focus, if they do not exist how can a history of nursing be attempted at all. In 1961 Edward Hallett Carr's, What is History? was published. Richard Evans 36 years later argues that the question is not so much 'What is history?', but 'Is it possible to do history at all?'. In this paper the aim is to identify the difficulties in doing historical research, and also ask a third question, 'What or whom is history for?'
护理史学家面临着一项艰巨的任务，即试图解读一个群体的历史，关于这个群体的文献资料稀少，而且他们自己几乎从未写过关于自己的内容。这有点像在档案中抽奖式地寻找文献证据，而当档案材料不存在时，这项任务就更难处理了。解读我们前辈的思想已经够困难的了，而当这些思想是由与它们所指对象不同的其他人撰写时，几乎是不可能的。可以说，这使得护理史学家无法进行实证主义传统追随者（包括杰弗里·埃尔顿）所阐述的那种历史研究。对埃尔顿来说，文献就是一切，而且它们高于一切，应该是关注的焦点，如果文献不存在，又怎么能尝试撰写护理史呢。1961年，爱德华·哈列特·卡尔的《历史是什么？》出版了。36年后，理查德·埃文斯认为问题与其说是“历史是什么？”，不如说是“到底有可能进行历史研究吗？”。在本文中，目的是确定进行历史研究的困难，同时提出第三个问题，“历史是为了什么或谁？”
