Background:

Nurses’ socio-professional affirmation becomes a reference in contexts of social disasters.

Objective:

To analyze the relationship between social disasters and the importance of the contribution of some nurses to designing/developing nursing as a profession at the end of the 19th century.

Methodology:

Although the methodological choices in the validation of the scientific nature of this historical study are based on historiography, the facts narrated and interpreted in this study were contextualized according to the historical period, which allowed the development of new meanings that define unities, totalities, series, and innovative relations within the documentary material itself.

Results:

Several nurses contributed to the development of nursing as a science. They practiced their profession in contexts with a common denominator: armed conflicts that translated into a scenario of social disaster, where the need to care for others was paramount.

Conclusion:

Contexts of social disasters unquestionably provided modern nursing with a field of action that brought it visibility and allowed its development as a discipline.

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