Florence Nightingale.

  • Muir, D. Erskine (Dorothy Erskine), 1889-
Date:
1946
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Florence Nightingale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.

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    main causes of disease in India are want of drainage and want of water supply , and pointed out that through irri- gation more food could be grown, and thus famine pre- vented, and the whole standard of life raised. Her lesson, preached in i860, has not yet been fully learned, though to-day irrigation has indeed begun to bring life to millions in India. 2. The *' Sick-poor''^ and the Paupers. She lived quietly and comfortably by herself, settling down at last in No. 10 South Street, Park Lane. Her household affairs were all managed for her by Mrs. Sutherland, who found the house, managed the domestic staff, and did the housekeeping. Dr. Sutherland dealt with her immense correspondence, and arranged all her interviews. After her father's death she was a rich woman, but she would proudly say that though she received hundreds of begging letters, and though the soldiers in the Crimea had known her to be rich, yet she never once received any letter from a soldier begging from her. The men had given to her fund, they never themselves asked her for money. As she grew older, her sympathies seem to have grown wider, while at the same time in some ways she mellowed and grew gentle. Once entirely preoccupied with the soldiers and army reforms, she now began to take an interest in the state of the poor as a whole. Her investiga- tions into general hospitals, and the state of public health in England, had brought home to her the miserable plight of those of the poorer classes who, for various reasons, could not go to hospital when ill, and had to be nursed at home. There they could get little care, and certainly no skilled nursing.