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Nurses working for the Henry Street Visiting Nurse Service in New York City took these snapshots, which show their lives and the lives of the families they cared for in the 1930s.

A uniformed, White, female nurse tending to a child in a crib.

“Miss Kramer takes care of a very sick baby who has pneumonia. The M.L.I. furnished a night nurse and the baby recovered. Father is on work relief.”

To help keep its policy holders healthy and to thus save money, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (M.L.I.) became a major provider of health care early in the 20th century—including a night nurse to Miss Kramer’s young patient.

The insurance company founded its own Visiting Nurse Service in New York in 1909.

Courtesy U.S. National Library of Medicine