Florence Nightingale is famous as the “lady with the lamp” in the Crimean War, 1854—56. There is a massive amount of literature on this work, but, as editor Lynn McDonald shows, it is often erroneous, and films and press reporting on it have been even less accurate. The Crimean War reports on Nightingale’s correspondence from the war hospitals and on the staggering amount of work she did post-war to ensure that the appalling death rate from disease (higher than that from bullets) did not recur. This volume contains much on Nightingale’s efforts to achieve real reforms. Her well-known, and relatively “sanitized”, evidence to the royal commission on the war is compared with her confidential, much franker, and very thorough Notes on the Health of the British Army, where the full horrors of disease and neglect are laid out, with the names of those responsible.
Florence Nightingale remains an inspiration to nurses around the world for her pioneering work treating wounded British soldiers during the Crimean War; authorship of Notes on Nursing, the foundational text for nursing practice; establishment of the world's first nursing school; and advocacy for the hygienic treatment of patients and sanitary design of hospitals. In Notes on Nightingale, nursing historians and scholars offer their valuable reflections on Nightingale and analysis of her role in the profession a century after her death on 13 August 1910 and 150 years since the Nightingale School of Nursing (now the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing and Midwifery at King's College, London) opened its doors to probationers at St Thomas' Hospital. There is a great deal of controversy about Nightingale—opinions about her life and work range from blind worship to blanket denunciation. The question of Nightingale and her place in nursing history and in contemporary nursing discourse is a topic of continuing interest for nursing students, teachers, and professional associations. This book offers new scholarship on Nightingale's work in the Crimea and the British colonies and her connection to the emerging science of statistics, as well as valuable reevaluations of her evolving legacy and the surrounding myths, symbolism, and misconceptions.
Describes the English Catholic nuns trained by Florence Nightingale to tend to the wounded during the Crimean War, including their struggles to work in poor military hospitals and their dedication to their faith.
In Florence Nightingale’s day, if a person was sick – and lucky – he or she was nursed at home with caring family members tending the bedside. Hospitals were horrible places from which few emerged alive. The nurses were often drunks and prostitutes. Doctors had rudimentary skills. Thus the privileged Nightingale family was appalled when Florence, who had done her share of household nursing, announced that she wanted to train to work in a hospital. After all, her role was cut out for her: she was to be a decorative, witty lady. A career, much less nursing, was out of the question. It took many years, but Florence found her calling in Crimea. More English soldiers died of sickness there than died in battle. If they were wounded they were almost sure to suffer in misery, lying on pallets caked with old blood, hungry and thirsty, without anyone to offer them so much as a sip of water. Florence caused a revolution in her insistence for cleanliness, wholesome food, and kind treatment of men, who were considered to be nothing more than cannon fodder. Florence’s campaign resulted in reforms to health care for millions of people. Although she was in frail health for much of her life, her sense of outrage and her extraordinary stamina in the face of prejudice and almost criminal ignorance make her story one of the most inspiring in history. Dozens of photographs, posters, and cartoons bring the past to life in this memorable biography.
Florence Nightingale: An Introduction to Her Life and Family introduces the Collected Works by giving an overview of Nightingale’s life and the faith that guided it and by outlining the main social reform concerns on which she worked from her “call to service’’ at age sixteen to old age. This volume reports correspondence (selected from the thousands of surviving letters) with her mother, father and sister and a wide extended family. There is material on Nightingale’s “domestic arrangements,’’ from recipes, cat care and relations with servants to her contributions to charities, church and social reform causes. Much new and original material comes to light, and a remarkably different portrait of Nightingale, one with a more nuanced view of her family relationships, emerges. The Series In the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale all the surviving writing of Florence Nightingale will be published, much of it for the first time. Known as the heroine of the Crimean War and the major founder of the modern profession of nursing, Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) will be revealed also as a scholar, theorist and social reformer of enormous scope and importance. Original material has been obtained from over 150 archives and private collections worldwide. This abundance of material will be reflected in the series, revealing a significant amount of new material on her philosophy, theology and personal spiritual journey, as well as on her vision of a public health care system, her activism to achieve the difficult early steps of nursing for the sick poor in workhouse infirmaries and her views on health promotion and women’s control over midwifery. Nightingale’s more than forty years of work for public health in India, particularly in famine prevention and for broader social reform, will be reported in detail. The Collected Works of Florence Nightingale demonstrates Nightingale’s astute use of the political process and reports on her extensive correspondence with royalty, viceroys, cabinet ministers and international leaders, including such notables as Queen Victoria and W. E. Gladstone. Much new material on Nightingale’s family is reported, including some that will challenge her standard portrayal in the secondary literature. Sixteen printed volumes are scheduled and will record her enormous and largely unpublished correspondence, previously published books, articles and pamphlets, many of which have long been out of print. There will be full publication in electronic form, permitting readers to easily pursue their particular interests. Extensive databases, notably a chronology and a names index, will also be published in electronic form, again permitting convenient access to persons interested not only in Nightingale but in other figures of the time.
Although Florence Nightingale is famous as a nurse, her lifetime’s writing on nursing and to nurses is scarcely known in the profession. Nursing professors tend to “look to the future, not to the past,” and often ignore her or rely on faulty secondary sources. Volume 12 related the founding of her school at St Thomas’ Hospital and her guidance of its teaching for the rest of her life. Volume 13, Extending Nursing, relates the introduction of professional training and standards outside St Thomas’, beginning with London hospitals and others in Britain, followed by hospitals in Europe, America, Australia and Canada. Also presented is material on work in India, Japan and China. The challenge of raising standards in the tough workhouse infirmaries is reported, as is Nightingale’s fostering of district nursing. A chronology in this volume provides a convenient overview of Nightingales work on nursing from 1860 to 1900. Both volumes give biographical sketches of key nursing leaders.
