Born in Ireland into a patrilineal inheritance system, Mary Holliday recognised early on that there was no future for her in the stanchly Church-controlled Ireland of the mid-20th Century. Her "best" prospects were an approved husband followed by decades of rampant baby making and domestic drudgery. Yet neither did she want to simply embark on a ship for America, like so many young Irish had done for so long. Faced with a love of her nation but a dread of the crippling economic realities of her time, she elected to follow her Aunt Alice's footsteps. As a first-born female of the family, she too, like Alice would become a nurse. Armed with this most portable of careers, the young Mary would forge her own way in the world and, as if to prove that the fate of Irish youth is to roam, she would eventually sail away from her Celtic home, first to Africa and then to Australia. This collection of stories tells of her journey, successfully navigating her way through life's adventures. In reading them, Mary hopes they will provide some joy, a sprinkle of laughter, a dose of inspiration and above all, a desire to be accommodating, flexible and tolerant in your own way through life. For if she has learnt one thing on her path, you never get far if you are not capable of, Adapting.

The object of the author in writing this volume is to offer to nurses, and especially to those women who desire to make monthly nursing a vocation, the instruction which they need for that purpose. The book is written under a firm conviction in the mind of the author that a work of this character is needed at the present timea work that combines some information to the monthly nurse in regard to her peculiar duties with considerable instruction in midwifery. He has learned during the forty-five years that he has practiced medicine in a small city and its vicinity, that mother and nurse are often combined in the same person. The important duty of nursing the sick is so generally performed by mothers, that they also, as a class, require some scientific knowledge to be acquired by means of plain, practical instruction. And, in fact, throughout our country, every mother is liable, in an emergency, to be called upon to fill the office of an accoucheur.