Florence Nightingale At First Hand

History.

Florence Nightingale is one of the most famous figures in modern history. Yet much of what we know of her emanates from unreliable second-hand accounts, and from a misreading of the primary sources. Florence Nightingale at First Hand by Lynn McDonald, editor of Nightingale's Collected Works, and the world's foremost Nightingale authority, aims to put this right. This is a book which reports what Florence Nightingale said and did, based on her writing, of which a massive amount survives, scattered in over two hundred archives throughout the world. Published to commemorate the centenary of Nightingale's death, McDonald's study presents a Florence Nightingale for the twenty-first century, as an author of great style and wit, a systems thinker and pioneering public health reformer--the heroine and nurse were only the start.

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.

Contributes new insights to Nightingale’s relevance for nursing today This in-depth analysis of Nightingale's legacy goes beyond established scholarship to examine her lesser known--and arguably even more important--writings beyond Notes on Nursing. The book demonstrates afresh her unparalleled and ongoing influence on professional nursing, on the core concepts of health, disease, and access to care as we understand them today. It introduces readers to the "real" Florence Nightingale – who pioneered evidence-based health care, campaigned for hospital safety, promoted economic opportunities for women, and mentored two generations of nursing leaders. The first part of the book focuses on Nightingale's core nursing concepts: gender and women’s issues, education, health promotion, infection control, professional ethics, pediatrics, and palliative care, and how they have transcended time to influence professional nursing today. The author draws on comments from current nursing and medical literature to demonstrate the ongoing relevance of Nightingale’s work. In the second part of the book, the author presents key writings by Nightingale, including the little-known background work that shaped her iconic Notes on Nursing. It goes on to cover key later writings, which show how her ideas evolved with advances in medical science and nursing practice. Key Features: Expands on established scholarship to reveal Nightingale’s contributions to theory, science, and policy in greater breadth and depth Demonstrates the remarkable relevance of her work to nursing issues today Nightingale’s core nursing concepts of health promotion, disease prevention, and access to care Disseminates Nightingale writing especially relevant to nursing leaders and policy advocates.

Anne Reading, an ordinary woman from London describes her extraordinary life. In 1855 she travels to the Crimea with Florence Nightingale and nurses the sick and wounded of the British Army. Five years later, she takes a six week voyage to New York aboard a sailing ship. Anne finds work at St. LukeÕs hospital. The following year brings the start of the Civil War. In 1862 Anne leaves St. LukeÕs and travels south to the headquarters of the Union Army in Washington. She was hired by Dorothea Dix, Superintendent of female nurses to the Federal Army and also known as the American Florence Nightingale. AnneÕs saga becomes the story of her life among the wounded. She describes experiences on hospital ships and in a former hotel converted into a hospital in Alexandria, Virginia. The diary chronicles the impact of atrocities on the soldiers. The general social unrest which developed in the northern cities as the war continues and the riots against the drafting of young men into the army against their will, makes very interesting reading. Anne married Andrew Furry in October, 1862 and soon gave up nursing and returned to the New York area. She does different work while waiting for him to be released from the army. She provides a detailed account of the death of President Lincoln and an eye witness account of his lying in state and funeral procession through New York in 1865. The diary continues with the FurrysÕ married life in Pennsylvania and New Jersey highlighted with the marriage of AnneÕs younger sister, Jenny and a swimming party at Coney Island. In 1870, Anne FurryÕs mother, Anne Reading writes about her trip to visit her daughter, with another daughter and the diary closes with the two of them returning to Bethnal Green, London, one year later.

Florence Nightingale was for a time the most famous woman in Britain–if not the world. We know her today primarily as a saintly character, perhaps as a heroic reformer of Britain’s health-care system. The reality is more involved and far more fascinating. In an utterly beguiling narrative that reads like the best Victorian fiction, acclaimed author Gillian Gill tells the story of this richly complex woman and her extraordinary family. Born to an adoring wealthy, cultivated father and a mother whose conventional facade concealed a surprisingly unfettered intelligence, Florence was connected by kinship or friendship to the cream of Victorian England’s intellectual aristocracy. Though moving in a world of ease and privilege, the Nightingales came from solidly middle-class stock with deep traditions of hard work, natural curiosity, and moral clarity. So it should have come as no surprise to William Edward and Fanny Nightingale when their younger daughter, Florence, showed an early passion for helping others combined with a precocious bent for power. Far more problematic was Florence’s inexplicable refusal to marry the well-connected Richard Monckton Milnes. As Gill so brilliantly shows, this matrimonial refusal was at once an act of religious dedication and a cry for her freedom–as a woman and as a leader. Florence’s later insistence on traveling to the Crimea at the height of war to tend to wounded soldiers was all but incendiary–especially for her older sister, Parthenope, whose frustration at being in the shade of her more charismatic sibling often led to illness. Florence succeeded beyond her wildest dreams. But at the height of her celebrity, at the age of thirty-seven, she retired to her bedroom and remained there for most of the rest of her life, allowing visitors only by appointment. Combining biography, politics, social history, and consummate storytelling, Nightingales is a dazzling portrait of an amazing woman, her difficult but loving family, and the high Victorian era they so perfectly epitomized. Beautifully written, witty, and irresistible, Nightingales is truly a tour de force.

Florence Nightingale’s Suggestions for Thought has intrigued readers from feminist-philosopher J.S. Mill (who used it in his The Subjection of Women) to the latest generation of women’s activists. Although selections from this long work have been published, Lynn McDonald is the first editor to work through the numerous surviving drafts of Nightingale’s writing and present it as a complete volume. Suggestions for Thought contains two early attempted novels, draft sermons, and a lengthy fictional dialogue featuring St. Ignatius, founder of the Jesuits, the American evangelical Jacob Abbott, and British agnostic Harriet Martineau (with cameo appearances by Protestant reformer John Calvin and the poet Shelley) all against an unnamed “M.S.” The most famous section of Suggestions for Thought is the essay Cassandra, famous as a rant against the family for stifling womens aspirations. Here the printed text is shown with the original novel draft alongside. McDonald’s introductions to each section provide historical context and Nightingales later views of the work. Currently, Volumes 1 to 11 are available in e-book version by subscription or from university and college libraries through the following vendors: Canadian Electronic Library, Ebrary, MyiLibrary, and Netlibrary.