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references). Water cures were prescribed; indeed both Nightingale and her father took several. Epidemics of cholera (1831-32, 1848-49, 1854, 1863), typhus and smallpox (1847) killed large numbers and threatened many more. The fact that cholera was spread by water was only published in 1849 by John Snow, whose map in the 1854 cholera epidemic located the infamous pump at Broad Street as a major source. As will be noted later in discussing Nightingale’s approach to health care, the great advances in medical science, such as the discovery of specific bacilli, postdate her own writing and practice. Thematic Organization Nightingale’s writing covers such a range of topics, with likely quite different readers in the different areas, that the decision was made early on to organize the Collected Works thematically rather than by the usual classification by type of work (books, essays, letters) in chronological order. Chronological publication of letters would have resulted in unwieldy volumes, for Nightingale kept up work on most of her great range of topics in most years. The result is that some letters have to be split between volumes, but this seemed to be a reasonable price to pay to have coherent volumes with thorough annotations on the people and events pertaining to them. All the letters can be consulted exactly as they were written in the electronic text. All of Nightingale’s theoretical and practical work was informed by a very particular, even singular, religious faith. This is true of her calling to be a nurse, her heading the nursing team in the Crimean War and all her subsequent years of work to reorganize society. Accordingly , it is no coincidence that the first substantive section of this Collected Works presents her spirituality and theological views, beginning (in Spiritual Journey) with her biblical annotations, sermons and deeply personal reflections. Theology presents her more academic analyses, essays, correspondence, her recommendations for a children’s edition of the Bible and some excerpts from her reading notes. Mysticism and Eastern Religions gives Nightingale’s comments on and translations of the medieval mystics, her Letters from Egypt, correspondence and notes on Eastern religions and other religious writing. The only area of Nightingale’s work which did not see successful publication, incidentally, was her religious writing, and this was not for lack of trying. As with the rest of her material, Nightingale sought practical influence; her Suggestions for Thought was intended to provide Introduction to the Collected Works / 7 a reasonable and practical faith to the working classes of her own country and time. She hoped to publish her translations of and introductions to the medieval mystics, with her own practical exhortation on the subject: spirituality to nourish the active life of social and political reform. In fact all she published on the subject of religion were two rather abstruse essays. Religious thinking and imagery pervade her writing on all subjects—social science, nursing (especially her letters to student nurses) and social reform. Society and Politics relates Nightingale’s work in these two areas, including such topics as society, government, elections and political parties, empire, family, status of women and gender roles. Here we present substantial unpublished writing as well as papers presented to social science and statistical congresses and journals. The relationship between this material on social science and her religious philosophy will be evident. Similarly the material giving her views on the role of government will provide context for the material to follow on the provision of health care services more particularly. Her expertise on Plato (427-347 bce) appears here in her extensive comments at the request of her friend, Benjamin Jowett (1817-93), on the introductions to his translations of the Dialogues of Plato (he took most of her advice in revising for a second edition). Her comments on major philosophers, on natural science and literature appear here also. This includes notes on classical writers, Shakespeare and on to contemporary novelists and poets. Public Health Care presents Nightingale’s broad, holistic conceptualization of a public health care system, according a powerful role to health promotion and preventive medicine and giving full scope to such socio-economic factors as occupation and housing. The volume begins with her Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes, 1861, in effect the second edition of Notes on Nursing, now with simpler language and a new chapter, ‘‘Minding Baby.’’ It covers the introduction of professional nursing into workhouse infirmaries, a crucial and difficult step...

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