Florence Nightingale (1820-1920) is famous as the heroine of the Crimean War and later as a campaigner for health care founded on a clean environment and good nursing. Though best known for her pioneering demonstration that disease rather than wounds killed most soldiers, she was also heavily allied to social reform movements and to feminist protest against the enforced idleness of middle-class women.
This original edition provides bold new insights into Nightingale's beliefs and a new picture of the relationship between feminism and religion. "Suggestions for Thought to the Searchers after Truth Among the Artisans of England" (1860), which contains the novel "Cassandra," is a central text in 19th-century history of feminist thought and is published here for the first time. Nightingale argues that work was the means by which every individual sought self-fulfillment and served God. She wrote influentially about the group most Victorians declared to be above work: unmarried, middle-class women.
1820-1910
Florence Nightingale who came to be known as "The Lady with the Lamp", was a pioneering English nurse, writer and noted statistician.
Inspired by what she took as a Christian divine calling, experienced first in 1837 at Embley Park and later throughout her life, Florence announced her decision to enter nursing in 1845. Nightingale worked hard to educate herself in the art and science of nursing, in spite of opposition from her family and the restrictive societal code for affluent young English women.
She cared for people in poverty. In December 1844, she became the leading advocate for improved medical care in the infirmarie. This led to her active role in the reform of the Poor Laws, extending far beyond the provision of medical care.
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