Praise for Small's earlier work on Nightingale: 'Hugh Small, in a
masterly piece of historical detective work, convincingly demonstrates
what all previous historians and biographers have missed . . . This is a
compelling psychological portrait of a very eminent (and complex)
Victorian.'
James Le Fanu, Daily Telegraph
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) is best known as a reformer of hospital
nursing during and after the Crimean War, but many feel that her nursing
reputation has been overstated.
A Brief History of Florence Nightingale tells the story of the
sanitary disaster in her wartime hospital and why the government covered
it up against her wishes. After the war she worked to put the lessons of
the tragedy to good use to reduce the very high mortality from epidemic
disease in the civilian population at home. She did this by persuading
Parliament in 1872 to pass laws which required landlords to improve
sanitation in working-class homes, and to give local authorities rather
than central government the power to enforce the laws. Life expectancy
increased dramatically as a result, and it was this peacetime civilian
public health reform rather than her wartime hospital nursing record
that established Nightingale's reputation in her lifetime.
After her death the wartime image became popular again as a means of
recruiting hospital nurses and her other achievements were almost
forgotten. Today, with nursing's new emphasis on 'primary' care and
prevention outside hospitals, Nightingale's focus on public health
achievements makes her an increasingly relevant figure.
