In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

Conclusion These are the themes that will appear throughout the Collected Works, beginning with the family correspondence below, for Nightingale discussed her ideas, hopes and ongoing work with family members. Collaborators became friends in some sense and close collaborators were invited to her parents’ and sister’s homes. Messages went back and forth, as did books, letters and documents, between Nightingale herself , family members and her associates. Family members of course shared her interests in politics (they were all Liberals), art, European travel and politics. Correspondence even late in life will reflect back to the Nightingale family travels of the 1830s and 1840s. The interconnections among the themes will be obvious. Nightingale ’s work on the foundation of nursing was a lifelong preoccupation , but it was part of a broader concern to reform public health care, prevent disease and promote health. All of this links to her faith, for it was a religious ‘‘call’’ that drew Nightingale to nursing in the first place, and a conception of a Creator God who ran the universe by laws informed her whole approach to health care thereafter. Nurses themselves, as doctors, needed spiritual nourishment to perform their roles. Nursing shared a scientific component with medicine, but it was an art and calling as well. Nightingale’s fame of course came from her role in the Crimean War. She maintained her commitment to save the lives of ordinary soldiers both in the Army at home in peace and in several later wars through decades of work with the War Office. Yet this was only a small part of her life. Even on military matters her interests broadened to the causes of war and the effects of military values and institutions, and she applied the same sort of analysis here as she did on public health care and famine prevention in India. The very choice of her major work commitments, public health care and India, itself reflects her understanding of God as Ruler by law, with scientific method, especially statistics, providing the means for human intervention for good. The depth and relentless quality of her life’s work too can only be understood by its basis in faith. Nightingale saw her efforts as doing what God wanted her to; the call to nursing was only the first stage. She joked about being an ‘‘employee’’ of the War Office, but was perfectly serious about God being the ‘‘Commander-in-Chief’’ whose work she did as ‘‘handmaid,’’ servant or co-worker. 84 / Florence Nightingale: Her Life and Family ...

Share