Florence Nightingale: Avenging Angel
In 1854, Florence Nightingale sailed from England with 38 nurses, bound for the Scutari barracks in Constantinople and the Crimean War. Two years later, she returned a world figure: Queen Victoria sent her an inscribed brooch, and a public subscription raised over a million pounds to fund the training of hospital nurses. Then, at age 37, Nightingale collapsed and remained an invalid for ten years. Basing his study on extensive research into previously unpublished material, Small (a London-based management consultant) attributes Nightingale's collapse to her discovery that her well-publicized nursing efforts at Scutari had made no difference: "[She] had not been running a hospital. She had been running a death camp." The real culprits, he notes, were bad drains, overcrowding, and poor ventilation. Once past her distress, Nightingale moved to expose the government cover-up. This book should reestablish Nightingale as a major figure in 19th-century health reform. Recommended for scholarly collections and larger general collections.ADavid Keymer, California State Univ., StanislausCopyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.