Notes on Matters...British Army (pp. I-XXIX):
A lot can be said about Florence Nightingale's work, which calls attention to the "matters" documented during the Crimean War. She compiled a variety of letters, organizing them into sections with who wrote them and by date- all the while keeping side notes, which help define certain terms and expand a bit on some things. Nightingale doesn't exactly give an omniscient point of view where she explains everything in detail but does expand on some knowledge exchanged, which gives us her purpose. Her purpose in this section was to introduce the British Army's hygiene and how "matters" affected the events that followed. She does point out in the beginning though that changes need to be made to prevent similar things from happening in the future. Or that we use the text to learn from their mistakes to better take care of our people. Organized with dates, letter documentation, and side notes, Nightingale also provides charts and histories (or collections of events) later in the book. Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army is definitely a different text from her other pieces on nursing.
Subsidiary Notes (pp. 1-19):
With these notes on nursing, Florence Nightingale presents a different route from her other book (seen above). She states "The main object I conceive to be, to improve hospitals, by improving hospital nursing, and to do this by improving or contributing towards the improvement of the class of hospital nurses, whether nurses or headnurses..." This quote gives us her purpose for this book. Subsidiary Notes is her claim or argument to, like she stated, improve nursing. She suggests a volunteer service of nurses and also talks about more education for these nurses. The organization of this text uses a table of contents but also uses a digest where her points are broken up even more before she goes into the text itself. The side notes (like she used in Notes on Matters) help to break her paragraphs down as well. We can use this text to take her advice and apply it to today's version of nurses to see how well we have shaped Florence Nightingale's ideal nursing society.
Notes on Nursing (any chapter- Chapter 1):
While the other two texts of Florence Nightingale's discussed the features of improving nursing for the future through education and observations of history, Notes on Nursing addresses "what it is and what it is not". Nightingale clearly states in the beginning of this chapter that she wishes the definition of nursing to mean something along the lines of "the proper use of fresh air, light, warmth, cleanliness, quiet and the proper selection of administration of diet". She then continues through the text organizing it in smaller chunks applying to the larger themes she said in her statement above. We can still use these logical points and general ideas today to help in nursing because instead of discussing the medicine and treatments needed, she speaks of techniques.
All of her texts have to deal with the idea of improving nursing in some way, though, Notes on Nursing seems to embody Florence Nightingale's argument the best. While she wishes to improve nursing through education and clearing the path for a new and better definition of nursing, she also speaks of a different idea that he other texts didn't touch on. The education of nurses is still very important, but Nightingale leans toward the importance of general and logical knowledge, which has little to do with medicine and is more of the art of nursing. This theme, looking a nursing from another angle, helps to project her idea of nursing improvement with methods, which can still be utilized today.
Two questions:
In Subsidiary Notes, Nightingale states that she wishes a wants to save the body of a patient and not to rely on the faith that person holds. The physical is much more important to her. But why is she attempting to overturn the Religious Order of nurses in hospitals? Does she believe that they are doing more bad than good?
From a historical point of view including all of the texts, what was it like in her time for her to wish to improve nursing this badly?
2 comments:
I think you offer a very thorough analysis of Nightingale's text, and hit on some very interesting points. I looked at the infectious diseases act and so found it extremely interesting that Nightingale also felt there were health problems with the military forces.
You draw heavily on Nightingale's argument for a need to improve the education of women. While her argument is primarily for nurses, I believe it draws heavily on many texts we had discussed thus far, including Fuller and Makin who campaign for a new generation of women, which may be achieved through greater educational opportunities for them.
I also think it would be extremely interesting to explore the role religion played in nursing at the time, and whether Nightingales beliefs were widely supported or opposed in other significant texts on the matter.
Is there a possibility that Nightingale values the physical body over the spiritual health? This could be a reason for her call for volunteer nurses. Perhaps she felt that the Religious Order were placing too much of an emphasis on the spiritual well-being of their patients and neglecting the urgency of physical health.
I almost see a battle against the scientific mind vs. the religious mind occurring in her publications. So not only is she wanting to educate women, but she also wants to solely focus on scientific methods. Because I am also researching Nightingale, we will have to research her views on religion further!
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