Florence Nightingale at First Hand: Vision, Power, Legacy

Abstract

If you want to read another book of sarcastic, sexist inferences, or one which shoots the messenger for bringing the bad news, read no further: this book is not for you. If you want to discover Nightingale as she was to her collaborators, some of the greatest minds and boldest reformers of her age, and how she attracted them to work with her to realize her vision, this is. If you want to discover a woman who gave much of her life to making nursing a respectable and well-paying profession for women (when none other was open to them), who reflected intelligently on the political and social movements of the day, who made friends of her colleagues and was ‘ mother-chief ’ to her own nurses, read on. Whether or not she talked to God about her mission, as she claimed, is not for me to say. It is arguably a better explanation for her life’s work than guidance from her rich, well-intentioned, but lackadaisical papa.