Florence Nightingale on Public Health Care: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, Volume 6

Appendix

Appendix Appendix: Biographical Sketches (Dr) John Sutherland (1808-91) A fter the five intense years of work with Sidney Herbert, Dr John Sutherland became Nightingale’s closest collaborator. He had studied medicine at Edinburgh University, published on cholera1 and was a member of the sanitary committee investigating hospital conditions in the Crimea when they met in 1855. He was in the inner circle from the planning of the first royal commission on. He was himself a member of both royal commissions, also a member of the Barrack and Hospital Committee, a committee on Mediterranean barracks and the Army Sanitary Commission. He worked with Nightingale on all aspects of War Office reorganization. He provided advice and concrete examples for Notes on Nursing, assisted with drafting material on Poor Law reform and analyzed data for Nightingale’s book on childbirth mortality. He continued the work on India with her until his last working days. Because of his deafness, the two often communicated by written notes. There are eight volumes of letters and notes at the British Library, Add Mss 45751-58. There was one great area of dispute between Nightingale and Sutherland. She sent him an early, handwritten section of Suggestions for Thought, ‘‘Man’s Will and God’s Law.’’ He annotated it extensively with outraged comments (Add Mss 45838), disagreeing profoundly with what he considered a despairing and debilitating ‘‘necessitarianism ,’’ which Nightingale herself later abandoned. Dr Sutherland was indeed embarrassed enough about the ‘‘warmth’’ of his comments, and 1 Report on the Epidemic Cholera of 1848 and 1849 to the General Board of Health Appendix A (London: HMSO). On his life see Dictionary of National Biography 178 and the obituary in the Lancet (25 July 1891):205. 674 / the fact of their thorough disagreement to return his remarks via Aunt Mai. He explained that it did not matter that they disagreed on these philosophical matters when they were united on the practical. Nightingale used Sutherland’s comments as ‘‘objections’’ to which she gave her own rebuttals (see Suggestions for Thought). Nightingale was exasperated with Sutherland over particular points. When they were preparing forms for the gathering of hospital statistics he apparently objected to women, that is, nurses, having the responsibility of filling them out. Nightingale was miffed that he ‘‘went off upon the ‘rights of man.’ ’’2 She thought that he was domineering to his wife, and plotted to outmanoeuvre him. Thus, when she thought Mrs Sutherland would be a good person to be honorary secretary to the Ladies’ Sanitary Association, she schemed to get his approval. (See Women on the friendship with Mrs Sutherland.) In addition to their concerted collaborative work, Dr Sutherland served also for some years as Nightingale’s physician, fruitlessly urging her to work less and take more time off. For years he was in constant attendance, drafting material for her and advising on strategy. Sometimes indeed it is not evident whether something was his draft for her or dictated by her; where a later version is available it shows that Nightingale kept the substance but often made the writing more lively. Clearly the two were in substantial agreement on health care issues and broader social policy. From the similarity of their drafts on workhouse reform (shown above) it seems that they shared a view of quality care for the poor as God’s will. In Nightingale’s later years he provided briefing notes to prepare her for the visits of Indian viceroys and governors. He resigned from his day job in 1888 and died in 1891. Sutherland never won any public honours in his own country for his enormously important work; he received a gold medal from Louis-Napoléon for his work on quarantine law. Late in life Nightingale was appalled that senior bureaucrats at the War Office did not even know of his existence. She was horrified to hear from her sister (falsely) that he had died without her knowing of it. Nightingale then wrote to J.J. Frederick, asking him to telegraph information.3 In his last years Nightingale received news 2 Letter to Dr Farr Good Friday 1861, Wellcome Ms 5474/37. 3 Letter to J.J. Frederick 15 January 1888, London Metropolitan Archives H1/ST/NC5/3/35. Appendix: Biographical Sketches / 675 about him from his wife, who both wrote and visited. Mrs Sutherland reported to Nightingale during a late illness of her husband that he liked to look...