Organization of Nursing.
“God Bless the work and the workers, is the earnest prayer of
Florence Nightingale”
[Nightingale, Florence]. Organization of Nursing. An account of the Liverpool Nurses Training School… With an introduction, and notes, by Florence Nightingale. Liverpool…: A. Holden…, 1865.
8vo.; edges foxed; indigo wrappers; stamped in gilt and blind. In a specially made cloth slipcase.
First edition; with a frontispiece engraving protected by tissue-guard opposite the title page; a floor plan of the Liverpool Nurses Training School and Home tipped-in at the verso of the title-page; and a fragment of an envelope addressed by Nightingale affixed to the front endpaper. With Nightingale’s annotation to the engraving, noting, “Hospital: its proximity very important almost necessary for Training School.”
An account of the history of the Liverpool Nurses Training School, as well as a “letter from Miss Nightingale,” a prospectus, a plan of education for the nurses, a list and cost of materials, a “method of working,” and a 37-page Appendix, with reports, balance sheets, memoranda, and a map. The book is dedicated to Nightingale.
In her Introduction, Nightingale has only praise for the Nurses School, commending their efforts: “The most satisfactory results, though not greater than you deserve, are greater than even the most sanguine hopes could have foreseen” (p. 10). Further on, she elaborates,
I press for the publishing of this account of the work, as being a pioneer, rather than a model, for similar Institutions all over the country. The work in Liverpool required greater extension, and more support, before all the fruits can ripen. But, so far as it has gone, it has proved its own future possibility by its past success, and promises to be one of the most important agencies for coping with human misery which the present day has put forth. (pp. 11-12)
The Liverpool School had three goals: “1. To provide thoroughly educated Professional Nurses for the Infirmary. 2. To provide District or Missionary Nurses for the poor. 3. To provide Sick Nurses for private families” (p. 27). The success of the school is best attributed to the second two points, which were unique to the school. As explained in the “Origin and Organization” chapter, Liverpool was divided into eighteen districts, each of which was meant to have its own nurse, for whom the materials and “comforts” were provided by “individual ladies, sometimes religious associations, sometimes the clergy and their wives” (p. 17). In effect, it was a cooperative effort between school and community. Students were expected to complete their training in the infirmary in one year, and, then, nurse people in their homes. This “has promoted cleanliness and knowledge of the laws of health; and in its economical, beneficent, and religious results has realized the expectations set forth in the Prospectus” (p. 19).
Nightingale approved both of the School’s innovations. In the “Letter from Miss Nightingale,” she writes that up until the founding of the school it was rare for nurses to make home visits, even though that is what they were trained for in hospitals. “I suppose everyone will agree with me that every sick man (or woman) is better at home, if only he (or she) could have the same medical treatment and nursing there that he (or she) would have in a hospital” (p. 26).
This book was published around the time Nightingale did extensive work on improving the sanitary and irrigation conditions in India; her Suggestions in Regard to Sanitary Works Required for Improving Indian Stations…was published in 1864, followed by Suggestions on a System of Nursing for Hospitals in India, in 1865.
Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2006. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2006. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC
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