Florence Nightingale on Public Health Care: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale

Florence Nightingale · Lynn McDonald

Jan 2004 · Collected Works of Florence Nightingale Book 6 · Wilfrid Laurier Univ. Press

About this ebook

This sixth volume in the Collected Works of Florence Nightingale reports Nightingale’s considerable accomplishments in the development of a public health care system based on health promotion and disease prevention. It follows directly from her understanding of social science and broader social reform activities, which were related in Society and Politics (Volume 5). Public Health Care includes a critical edition of Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes, papers on mortality in aboriginal schools and hospitals, and on rural health. It reports much unknown material on Nightingale’s signal contribution of bringing professional nursing into the dreaded workhouse infirmaries. This collection presents letters and notes on a wide range of issues from specific diseases to germ theory, and relates some of her own extensive work as a nurse practitioner, which included organizing referrals to doctors and providing related care.

Currently, Volumes 1 to 11 are available in e-book version by subscription or from university and college libraries through the following vendors: Canadian Electronic Library, Ebrary, MyiLibrary, and Netlibrary.

About the author

Editor Lynn McDonald is a professor of sociology at the University of Guelph, Ontario, a former president of the National Action Committee on the Status of Women, Canadas largest womens organization, and a former Member of Parliament. She herself has been a public health advocate. As a Member of the Canadian Parliament, she succeeded in getting the Non-smokers Health Act adopted in 1988 as a private members bill. It not only made Parliamentary history (aside from the fact that McDonald was the first Ms in the House of Commons) but it also made Canada a leader in the tobacco wars. She is the author of several books on women theorists.