The Life of Florence Nightingale

Abstract

The Life of Florence Nightingale -By Sir Edward Cook. New York: Macmillan, 1942. 510 pp. Price, $4.50. The new edition of Sir Edward Cook's The Life of Florence Nightingale is peculiarly timely in view of the impetus which the present war has given to tropical medicine and to military medicine. Miss Nightingale's name is so identified with the founding of the profession of nursing that few are aware of her fundamental contributions to sanitation, military medicine, tropical medicine, medical statistics and nomenclature, and hosplital construction and administration, all based upon her own experience in the military hospitals at Scutari during the Crimean War. She was directly responsible for several inquiries into the health of the Crimean Army, the army at home, and the army in India, and contributed importantly to the findings and recommendations of the Royal Commissions appointed to deal with these matters. She demonstrated conclusively that the medical morbidity and mortality rates among British troops at home stations, in the Crimea, and in India, were largely preventable. By the application of simple sanitary measures she greatly reduced the incidence of hospital-transmitted dysentery and typhus. She emphasized repeatedly that the one protection against cholera is sanitation. She was responsible for the introduction of sanitation into the British Army, for the complete reorganization of the Army Medical Department and the Army Hospital system, for the establishment of the Army Medical School, and she it was who nominated the first faculty. She prepared a classification of disease and medical statistical forms which were made available to the medical department of the United States Army at the request of the Secretary of War, during the Civil War. With ample justification she may be referred to as the mother both of military and of tropical medicine. This biography is one which should be widely read by physicians, sanitarians, and medical students. It is readable and extensive. It is replete with direct quotations from personal letters, from the various Royal Commissions, and other original sources, which greatly enhance its historical value. A lengthy bibliography and a useful index are included. THOMAS T. MACKIE

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