![]() ![]() 'My present life is suicide', she wrote in 1850. She felt frustrated by the suffocating existence which denied her the use of her intelligence and energy and which, on several occasions, drove her to the edge of breakdown. ![]() Florence struggled hard to find fulfilment, against the opposition of her family. They studied history, mathematics, Italian, classical literature and philosophy, and from an early age Florence, who was the more academic of the two girls, displayed an extraordinary ability for collecting and analysing data which she would use to great effect in later life.Īlthough, by early-19th-century standards, Nightingale had been given a man's education, she was confined by the conventions of the day, which decreed that, as an upper-middle-class woman, she should spend most of her time in frivolous pursuits and domestic routines. Dr Lynn McDonald's projected 16-volume abridged edition of Nightingale's works will help to clarify the reformer's thoughts on such diverse subjects as religion, the army, the use of statistics (of which she was a pioneer), hospitals, women, nursing education, Poor Law reform and so on.įlorence, born in the city of that name in 1820, and her older sister Parthenope, benefited from their father's advanced ideas about women's education. Future biographers will be helped by a large-scale project which begins publication this year (2002). Sir Edward Cook's two-volume Life, published in 1913, is still the best biography, despite the popularity of Cecil Woodham-Smith's Florence Nightingale, which appeared in 1950. The scale of the material is one reason why, up to now, there has been no authoritative, fully documented biography. At least 14,000 letters are known to survive, along with 147 printed publications, and hundreds of private notes and memoranda. The enormous collection at the British Library - the second largest personal archive after Gladstone's - is just the tip of the iceberg. ![]() But comparatively few of us are aware of the importance of that story's sequel: of how, from her sickbed, Nightingale attempted to supervise the modernisation of nursing, together with advising governments on army reform, sanitation in Britain and India, and hospital design.Īnother part of the problem in coming to lasting conclusions about Florence Nightingale is the sheer scale of the materials involved. Why then does her true significance continue to elude us? Generations have been raised on the sentimentalised story of her time as a nurse during the Crimean War, fighting the obstructive army and medical officials to ensure that the sick and wounded were nursed in civilised conditions, and with proper care. In short, as the historian Raphael Samuel once wrote, she is one of the 'stock images' of our island story. For nearly 20 years (between 19) her portrait, adapted from Barrett's painting of Nightingale at Scutari, The Mission of Mercy (now in the National Portrait Gallery, London), could be found on the £10 note. Until very recently (2002) she was the only woman, alongside the male personalities of Newton, Wellington and Dickens, whose image had ever adorned our paper currency.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |