Harriet Camp Lounsbery

Born in Indiana in 1851, Harriet Camp Lounsbery trained at the School of Nursing of the Homeopathic Hospital of Brooklyn after studying at Temple Grove Seminary in Saratoga Springs, New York. A 1927 nursing profile describes her as an author, administrator, and organizer, and notes that she later made her home in West Virginia.

Lounsbery built a varied career in nursing and public health. She served as superintendent of nurses at her alma mater, worked for years as a school nurse in Charleston, West Virginia, and became supervisor of school nurses as well as supervisor of physiology and hygiene teaching in the public schools there. The same profile also credits her with preparing the original bill for nurse registration in West Virginia and helping secure its passage in 1907.

She is best remembered as the author of Making Good on Private Duty: Practical Hints to Graduate Nurses (1912). In its preface, she explains that the book grew out of her own years in private nursing and was written to guide young graduate nurses through the uncertainties of early professional life. She also contributed work to nursing journals, and her career included service connected with both the Spanish-American War and World War I.