Creamed Dishes for the Convalescent.

Editor's note: From its first issue in 1900 through to the present day, AJN has unparalleled archives detailing nurses' work and lives over more than a century. These articles not only chronicle nursing's growth as a profession within the context of the events of the day, but also reveal prevailing societal attitudes about women, health care, and human rights. Today's nursing school curricula rarely include nursing's history, but it's a history worth knowing. To this end, From the AJN Archives highlights articles selected to fit today's topics and times.This excerpt, from an article in the June 1915 issue, illustrates the ways in which nurses of that era were intimately involved in feeding their patients. Cora McCabe Sargent, a nurse who wrote several nutrition-related articles for AJN, writes that "while it is not at all essential that a good cook understand nursing the sick, it is most important that a good nurse have a certain, practical knowledge of cooking." Here she extols the value of a meticulously made cream sauce in tempting "the capricious appetite of the sick." (To read the full article, go to https://links.lww.com/AJN/A108.)Today's nurses are still concerned with patient nutrition, often addressing the nutritional needs of a community or a particular patient population in addition to those of individual patients. For tools and interventions that can help nurses to support good nutrition later in life, see "Malnutrition in Older Adults" in this month's issue.