Nurse's cap

The cap's original purpose was to keep the nurse's hair neatly in place and present a modest appearance.

The nurse's cap originated from a group of women in the early Christian era, called "deaconesses."

This particular head covering was worn to show that this group of women worked in the service of caring for the sick.

The cap worn was hood-shaped with a ruffle around the face and tied under the chin, similar to cleaning ladies of that day.

The Bellevue cap covered the entire head except the ears, and can be compared to a current ski hat, although it was made out of white linen and had fringe around the bottom (put simply, it resembled an upside-down cupcake wrapper, with a fringe around the bottom of the opening).

Nurses often used a thin layer of these lubricants applied to the back of the ribbon to attach stripes to their caps.

However, the use of the nurses' cap had begun to slowly decline in Western Europe and Northern America by the late 1960s.

The use of nurses' caps in the medical facilities of the United States all but disappeared by the late 1980s with the near-universal adoption of scrubs.