Notes on Nursing
What It Is, and What It Is Not
Florence Nightingale
- English
- ePUB (mobile friendly)
- Available on iOS & Android
Notes on Nursing
What It Is, and What It Is Not
Florence Nightingale
About This Book
Notes on Nursing, published in 1860 by Florence Nightingale (1820-1910), is the most famous publication in the history of nursing. Defining nursing as "helping the patient to live, " Nightingale "introduced the modern standards of training and esprit de corps, and early grasped the idea that diseases are not 'separate entities, which must exist, like cats and dogs, ' but altered conditions, qualitative disturbances of normal physiological processes, through which the patient is passing. While she did not know the bacterial theory of infectious diseases, she realized that absolute cleanliness, fresh air, pure water, light, and efficient drainage are the surest means of preventing them" (Garrison, History of Medicine, p. 773). A disciple of the pioneer statistician Adolphe Quetelet, Nightingale supported all of her writings with statistical evidence; a chart on page 78 of the Notes shows the number of women employed as nurses in 1851-- some of them as young as five years of age! --