Florence Nightingale on Public Health Care

Bonnie J. White is a Ph.D. candidate in History Department at McMaster
University.

Lynn McDonald offers a wide-open window into the life and work of
Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) in these three latest additions to
the Collected Works series that covers a large body of the pioneer
nurse’s writing.

Volume 6 offers a comprehensive look at the important contributions
Nightingale made to public health care. Specifically, it examines
Nightingale’s “call to service,” the influence of her faith in her
decision to commit herself to workhouse reform, the challenges of rural
health care, the role of health missionaries, and the need for a new
health system based on statistical monitoring and the appropriate
allocation of resources. The editorial support McDonald gives to the
material makes Nightingale’s work accessible to non-specialists.

Volume 7 presents letters Nightingale wrote during her travels in
Europe, Ireland, and Britain. Early correspondence shows a young woman
who was driven, yet curious and lighthearted. Letters expressing her
political opinions are cleverly intermixed with detailed descriptions of
acquaintances, dances, operas, and art. An important part of this volume
is Nightingale’s visit to Kaiserworth—the time in her life when she
began to fulfill her call to service. While McDonald provides an
excellent framework for Nightingale’s visits to Kaiserworth, she fails
to provide adequate context for Nightingale’s views concerning
European events and assumes considerable knowledge on the part of
readers regarding the European political situation in the mid-19th
century.

Volume 8 focuses on issues of marriage, the role of women in religious
communities, the regulation of prostitution, and Nightingale’s failed
attempt to establish a lying-in ward at King’s College Hospital.
McDonald provides excellent context for the problems faced by birthing
women in this period and skilfully demonstrates that Nightingale did not
abandon improved maternity care, despite the misinformed accusations by
some historians. Rather, McDonald argues, Nightingale sought measures to
improve education for women and stressed the need for a nursing
profession despite the problems facing medicine at that time. Included
in this volume is Nightingale’s personal correspondence with various
women (from Empress Eugenie of France to household servants in her
employ). Her abandoned novel, Suggestions for Thought, written in
1850–53, is published here in full.

The Collected Works, which draws on primary materials from more than
200 archives and private collections, successfully balances the
historiography, which, McDonald argues, has been largely based on
secondary material and has been excessively critical of Nightingale’s
life and contributions to health care. Although more editorial content
is needed at times, this series is a seminal contribution to our
understanding of the life and work of Florence Nightingale.