A Call for Civic Education

I chose to look into the preface and the first section in Nightingale's Notes on Nursing. I decided to focus on the beginning of her manual to get a sense of how she is setting herself up, and what she is saying to get her readers attention. I also focused on her tone and how she uses it to connect to her audience.

The first time I read through the preface, I felt she went straight to her point without creating an elaborate introduction. She wrote the book with a purpose, and she was not going to waste any time on extra words. I appreciated her frankness and thought that this was probably very effective for her readers. Her work is set up like a manual, not only for the hospital nurse, for every women at home. She writes, "Every woman, or at least almost every woman in England has, at one time or another of her life, was charged of the personal health of somebody, whether child or invalid - in other words, every woman is a nurse." I thought this was a very powerful statement because she has just addressed the entire female population of England, willing them to read further into her text. In the first section she goes on to describe what constitutes nursing. Defining it simply as administration of medication and tending to the wounded.

But what she sets up later in this section, I believe, is of great importance. She goes on the develop the idea that preventative measures are just as important as controlling a disease. She also blatantly says that most symptoms are caused not by the diseases, but a lack of sanitation and proper ventilation. It is like she is bringing her experiences in the war and applying them to every day life and simple care. It appears to me that Nightingale is trying to reform the way people view health in England. She has done extensive research ,at this time, on the conditions of military hospitals and has been reforming them. She is arguing for a higher quality of military hospitals as a way to save the nation. Without a military England would not have been as powerful. So Nightingale is bringing what she learned to the public in a call for a civic education. She wants the populous to be aware of simple measures in hygiene and over all well being. I find this intriguing because she could just have easily brought up her ideals with the trained medical professions of her time and gained notoriety that way, but instead she felt this information belonged to the people. . I believe the tone of her writing is very important. It is informative yet calling the people to action. She does not want her book to be read and then set down, but rather, be the manual that people reference daily and adopt into their daily lives. There is a sense of urgency in the manner of her address to stress the importance of her words. This would have been very effective in reaching her audience. . I am still trying to form a more concrete idea for my essay, but at this point I see a connection between Nigthingale's Notes on Nursing and her Notes on Matters. The information she presents in Notes on Matters is more like a list and contains a lot of information. She condenses this informatio into a more readable form in Notes on Nursing. I would like to know how her two texts present a sense of civic education and how did the population respond? I plan on searching the jornal database on the blog for more background information.