Dr. Siobhan Nelson, “A Modern Family: Scientific Management, Medicine, Nursing and the Dionne Quintuplets (1934–40)”

Abstract:
Born on May 28, 1934, in the depths of the Depression to a francophone family in rural Northern Ontario, in a house without running water or electricity, these identical five baby girls riveted the world as they grew up in a Truman Show-like tourist attraction called “Quintland.” This talk examines the creation of the scientific model “family” for the babies, comprised of celebrity doctor, Alan Dafoe, and the team of nurses who cared for the babies from birth. Dr. Nelson examines the complex relationships between the nurses, the children’s family, and the medical men who oversaw the children’s health and commercialization. Nurses were key to the scientific management of the babies and collected data on every aspect of the children’s lives. The quintuplets were idealized as prototypical ‘healthy babies’ whose scientific surrogate parents provided the North American model for motherhood and families during the 1930s and 40s.

Speaker Bio:
Sioban Nelson is professor of nursing at the University of Toronto, where she has served as Dean and Vice Provost. She has published nine books, including the acclaimed Say Little, Do Much: Nursing, Nuns, and Hospitals in the Nineteenth Century. With Suzanne Gordon, she edited the prize-winning Complexities of Care: Nursing Reconsidered, a ground-breaking work on the challenges facing contemporary nursing and in 2010 with Anne Marie Rafferty she coedited Notes on Nightingale: The Influence and Legacy of a Nursing Icon on the centenary of Nightingale’s death. She served as editor-in-chief of the journal Nursing Inquiry for 12 years. Currently, she is co-editor of the Culture and Politics of Health Care Work series for Cornell University Press. She is a fellow of the American Academy of Nurses and the Canadian Academy of Health Sciences. She is working on a general history of nursing from a material culture perspective.