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herself as a long-term inhabitant of it or even as running it. She routinely drew up plans, rules, regulations, lists of supplies, procedures, training requirements, etc. for the War Office. She furnished them to any and all who needed them, and even took the initiative to send them out when no one thought to ask. The first practical application from the royal commission occurred with Britain’s incursions in China in 1857. Nightingale was pleased to conclude that the new methods reduced the overall mortality of the troops in China to one tenth of what it had been, mortality from disease to one in seven.37 At Harriet Martineau’s instigation, she sent material, including actual forms as well as findings from the royal commission and her own advice, for use in the American Civil War. (Martineau, a long-time and staunch opponent of slavery, also sent material.) Nightingale prepared extensively for an expected British expedition in Canada arising from the ‘‘Trent Affair.’’ Britain actually sent reinforcements to Canada in 1861 but a possible war was averted thanks, according to informed opinion generally and Nightingale in particular, to the moderating counsel of Prince Albert (1819-61). Her detailed preparation included estimating distances to be covered by sleds and the comparative weights and warmth of blankets and buffalo robes. Her extensive work during the Franco-Prussian War, 1870-71, will be discussed shortly. She continued to be involved during the Egyptian campaign of 1882 and the Zulu War, updating and refining the preparation process. By the Boer War of 1899-1902 she was no longer involved, although her forms and procedures were used. Indeed the Army Medical Corps was using her forms well into the twentieth century. Illness and Invalidism Neither Nightingale nor her contemporaries ever knew the name or the medical details of the disease, brucellosis, that, to the best of our knowledge today, nearly killed her in the Crimean War, and which returned in its chronic phase while she was working on her first royal commission. It is commonly transmitted from cows, sheep and goats, food animals in the Crimea and presumably the source of infection. 37 Cook, Life 1:398. An Outline of Florence Nightingale’s Life / 33 There is now a growing body of information on brucellosis38 to suggest that Nightingale did in fact suffer from a serious, organic disease and was not an ‘‘intentional invalid,’’ neurotic or malingerer, as has been commonly charged. Even the Encyclopedia Britannica article on Nightingale, as late as 1989, claimed that it had ‘‘never been shown that Florence Nightingale had any organic illness; her invalidism may have been partly neurotic and partly intentional.’’39 Elaine Showalter referred to Nightingale’s ‘‘strategic invalidism,’’ showing how she used it, but nonetheless denying its physical causes.40 Elizabeth Burton would concede only that her health was ‘‘undermined’’ by work in the Crimea to stress the ‘‘vague maladies’’ that occurred whenever Nightingale was ‘‘emotionally disturbed.’’41 F.B. Smith, Nightingale’s most hostile analyst, considered that she ‘‘feigned’’ weakness. The fact that the only evidence of a medical prescription he found in her papers was for an ‘‘appetizing tonic’’ was for him suspicious.42 He further suggested that ‘‘whenever Nightingale announced herself to be ill she was busy’’ (92) as if this were a matter of choice. Yet the correspondence below will show that she refused to see people she was very keen to: Gladstone, General Gordon, William Rathbone, Jowett, etc., as well as old and dear friends like Mme Mohl and Louisa Ashburton , not to speak of her mother. Pickering’s Creative Malady, 1974, gives excellent coverage of Nightingale’s work and writing as well as considerable detail of her medical symptoms, all the while insisting that there was ‘‘no organic basis’’ for the latter. Pickering qualified Cook’s charitable description of her illness, ‘‘dilation of the heart and neurasthenia,’’ as having ‘‘no precise meaning,’’ and neurasthenia as something which would now be taken as a sign of ‘‘psychoneurosis.’’43 Consistent with this, he 38 D.A.B. Young, ‘‘Florence Nightingale’s Fever’’; Barbara M. Dossey, Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary and Healer, appendix ‘‘The Case for Brucellosis ’’ 426-27; and Barbara M. Dossey, ‘‘Florence Nightingale and Her Crimean Fever and Invalidism.’’ 39 Encyclopedia Britannica 15th ed. (1989) 8:706. 40 Elaine Showalter, ‘‘Florence Nightingale’s Feminist Complaint: Women, Religion, and Suggestions for Thought’’ 396. 41 Elizabeth Burton, The Early Victorians at Home 1837-1861 198. 42 Smith, Florence Nightingale: Reputation...

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