Florence Nightingale: The Making of an Icon [Hardcover]

Not for the fainthearted, the 647 pages of Florence Nightengale by Mark Bostridge is a detailed account of the life and times of the heroine.
Florence herself can take the credit, or blame, for the size of the book because she left behind more than 200 volumes of her writings, including drafts, letters, reports and even scraps of papers. More is known about Florence than any other woman from the Victorian era.

Read this book and be inspired. Nurses are special people.

The era in the 1800's is landscaped by Bosteridge, drawing on the influences of religion, family life, culture and economic influences, many of which are mirrored in the financial meltdown of 2008. They had bank failures back in the 1800's; crop failures, and the poor struggling to exist. It is in this backdrop that Florence first moved to help those in need.

Florence is best known by the public for her Lady of the Lamp reputation earned in the Crimean War and while this defines her, that war experience was for a brief period of her 90 years life, 1854 to 1856. One third of the book deals with the Crimean action, the rest deals with an outstanding woman in troublemsome times. Florence was intelligent, well travelled, musically talented, forceful, determined and caring.

Bosteridge draws out her character and leaves us in no doubt we are dealing with an exceptional lady with the stamp of leadership.

On the subject of Florence's sexuality, the author is a little disappointing. Towards the end of his book he notes the several works about Florence, with the more modern views suggesting that she was lesbian. Her celibacy obviously drew attention and caused writers to wonder or assert.
While Bostridge mentions that these assertions are unfounded, we need to look to Gillian Gill's "Nightingales Florence and Her Family" for a more determined rejection of the lesbian suggestions.

Gill points out that the commencement of sexual innuendo commenced in 1940 when a prominent biographer insinuated that Florence had lesbian proclivities. Others, including American academics, and some film makers, marched to the sound of that drum. Gill maintains that there is just no evidence that Florence engaged in sexual activity with women (or men!) and the huge weight of documentation about her life defends that view.
Gill puts the record straight.

Florence lived to 90 years of age, a spinster. She was an attractive young lady and sought after, turning down offers of marriage. In her early days she wanted freedom. Her attitudes are recorded. Marriage interfered with her view of freedom so she avoided it. After Crimea she sought privacy and seclusion, beset by long standing ill health.

In 2010 there will be world wide acknowlegements of the centenary of her death. There will be some who will point out that nursing, and the views of Florence, have changed in 100 years but there will be no escaping that our world is a better place for her life. In any event there are signs that modern nursing preparation and training are unlikely to stand the 100 year test.
She struggled when women were powerless. Nursing was mostly an ugly profession outside the Religious Orders, and certainly in England nurses were primarily engaged in washing, cooking and bed making. Bosteridge shows nurses to have been drunks on duty, with night nurses prone to drinking and spending time in bed with their patients. No wonder the well-off Nightingale family tried to discourage Florence reaching out to those in need, even in the local community.

And the soldiers looked after by Florence and her 38 nurses in Crimea were low in the Army food chain. Their plight was revealed by newspaper correspondents and caring people, including Florence. The army left them to die of disease and was in denial until they were subjected to the wrath of the British public showing interest in the welfare of 30,000 of their men.

The Florence Nightingale book by Bosteridge belongs in your libary. You will wish to return to it to review the facts and engage again in the life of Florence for inspiration.

Richard Glenister B.A (hons)

Florence Nightingale was homeschooled to be a Victorian lady but chose instead to become a nurse - then an unsuitable profession for her class. Despite her widespread actions it's surprising to note this is the first major biography of Florence Nightingale in more than fifty years - and it uses much previously unpublished material to explore her world, from family papers to journals. A vivid biography of her life and times makes for a top pick for any lending library strong in either health history or biography.

This biography is a great complement to those that have come before (among the best of which are those of Gil and Dossey) and highlights the many ways in which Florence Nightingale laid the foundations for the healthcare mission as we know it today. His book was instrumental in the research I did for my own book "The Florence Prescription: From Accountability to Ownership." Here are just a few highlights from the career of this extraordinary woman:

- With her classic book "Notes on Nursing," Nightingale presaged the home healthcare movement that must be an essential element of real healthcare reform in the years to come. It also influenced several generations of women to become nurses.

- She was the first and most influential advocate for the healthcare rights of soldiers and veterans - someone to whom a great debt is owed by every veteran on every continent.

- She was the first hospital epidemiologist, and for her work was the first woman ever made a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society.

- She was the first to implement the principle - taken for granted today - that medical triage would be based on the clinical needs of the patient, and not his rank in the military, social standing, or religion.

- Her work at the Scutari Barrack Hospital presaged virtually every major support department of the modern hospital: the first hospital medical records function, the first hospital-based pharmacy service, the first hospital nutrition service, the first hospital linen and housekeeping services, and she was even the first to number the beds in a ward.

- Although at the time of her work at Scutari germ theory was still novel and not widely accepted, her insistence on absolute cleanliness was the first real hospital infection control program, and her subsequent work gave a major boost to the sanitation movement (she would be absolutely horrified at the resistance hospitals still face to get clinicians to wash their hands between patients).

- She was in a very real sense the first hospital architect. The Herbert Hospital and the St. Thomas Hospital in London were the first hospitals built specifically for that purpose, as opposed to converting another building, and both were built upon principles developed by Nightingale. The modular design she developed for sanitation and ventilation purposes would guide hospital construction for the next century.

- She was the first person ever to calculate, and then work to reduce, cost per patient day, setting a precedent that has been followed by every hospital CFO ever since.

- And, of course, more than any other person she defined what it means to be a nurse and established nursing as a legitimate profession, and was the guiding light to the first professional school of nursing, graduates of which became the next generation of leaders in the field.

- In her spare time, she wrote a multi-volume book on religion that was highly praised by no less than John Stuart Mill, though was never published, and her collection of letters is the largest in the British collection (Winston Churchill's collection holds second place).

- With all her accomplishments, Nightingale never sought the public spotlight and assertively avoided the adulation that the British public wanted to shower upon her in the aftermath of her accomplishments at Scutari. But she was always beloved by the men she considered "her children," the soldiers of the British army,

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