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*Notes on Nursing* is an interesting book. It was aimed at educating women on how to nurse infants and invalids at home, rather than how to nurse in a hospital.
Nightingale believed that diseases spread through contagion – that is, through bad air rather than through germs. (Though after the 1870s she embraced the emerging evidence that use of anti-septics reduced infections.) The main thrust of *Notes on Nursing* is on preventing disease by improving air flow – ensuring the water was not contaminated, that there were no dunghills or privies nearby, that the linen was aired thoroughly.
Most of the practical issues she addresses have been dealt with through modern sanitation. Notably, the lengthy discussion of what kind of commode to choose and how to clean it is now obviated by having indoor plumbing.
However, *Notes on Nursing* contains many interesting side discussions. Nightingale breaks off here to condemn the tendency of crinolines to catch fire and burn women to death; she darts there to remember the state of the drains when she was nursing in the Crimea; she stops to discuss her understanding of ‘women’s role’.
NOTE.–I would earnestly ask my sisters to keep clear of both the jargons now current everywhere (for they are equally jargons); of the jargon, namely, about the "rights" of women, which urges women to do all that men do, including the medical and other professions, merely because men do it, and without regard to whether this is the best that women can do; and of the jargon which urges women to do nothing that men do, merely because they are women, and should be "recalled to a sense of their duty as women," and because "this is women's work," and "that is men's," and "these are things which women should not do," which is all assertion, and nothing more. Surely woman should bring the best she has, whatever that is, to the work of God's world, without attending to either of these cries. For what are they, both of them, the one just as much as the other, but listening to the "what people will say," to opinion, to the "voices from without?" And as a wise man has said, no one has ever done anything great or useful by listening to the voices from without.
I’ve just read a biography of Nightingale and I am impressed with her grasp at organisational and architectural theory. She didn’t really like nursing people; she liked organising environments so as to minimise disease. She was a big fan of statistics, of working with parliamentary inquiries into the sanitation and design of military hospitals, and, oddly, into improving irrigation in India so as to reduce mortality in the jewel of England’s empire.
Also, she liked writing letters. As in, she was bedbound for about fifty years and wrote for hours each day, instructing others on how to live their lives in a sanitary fashion.
Nightingale believed that diseases spread through contagion – that is, through bad air rather than through germs. (Though after the 1870s she embraced the emerging evidence that use of anti-septics reduced infections.) The main thrust of *Notes on Nursing* is on preventing disease by improving air flow – ensuring the water was not contaminated, that there were no dunghills or privies nearby, that the linen was aired thoroughly.
Most of the practical issues she addresses have been dealt with through modern sanitation. Notably, the lengthy discussion of what kind of commode to choose and how to clean it is now obviated by having indoor plumbing.
However, *Notes on Nursing* contains many interesting side discussions. Nightingale breaks off here to condemn the tendency of crinolines to catch fire and burn women to death; she darts there to remember the state of the drains when she was nursing in the Crimea; she stops to discuss her understanding of ‘women’s role’.
NOTE.–I would earnestly ask my sisters to keep clear of both the jargons now current everywhere (for they are equally jargons); of the jargon, namely, about the "rights" of women, which urges women to do all that men do, including the medical and other professions, merely because men do it, and without regard to whether this is the best that women can do; and of the jargon which urges women to do nothing that men do, merely because they are women, and should be "recalled to a sense of their duty as women," and because "this is women's work," and "that is men's," and "these are things which women should not do," which is all assertion, and nothing more. Surely woman should bring the best she has, whatever that is, to the work of God's world, without attending to either of these cries. For what are they, both of them, the one just as much as the other, but listening to the "what people will say," to opinion, to the "voices from without?" And as a wise man has said, no one has ever done anything great or useful by listening to the voices from without.
I’ve just read a biography of Nightingale and I am impressed with her grasp at organisational and architectural theory. She didn’t really like nursing people; she liked organising environments so as to minimise disease. She was a big fan of statistics, of working with parliamentary inquiries into the sanitation and design of military hospitals, and, oddly, into improving irrigation in India so as to reduce mortality in the jewel of England’s empire.
Also, she liked writing letters. As in, she was bedbound for about fifty years and wrote for hours each day, instructing others on how to live their lives in a sanitary fashion.
