Talk:Florence Nightingale

much of the wp article, which is being rewritten, focuses on Nightingale's intimate relationships and lends credence to a rumor of mental and psychosomatic illness. These are stereotypical faults of biographers of women. After Nightingale returned to Britain from the Crimea. she was essentially bedridden until her death. Considering that this was the pre-antibiotic era and that she was directly exposed to any number of patients with infectious disease, as well as the unsanitary conditions of the hospitals while in the Crimea, it seems odd to assume, for example, that she had "psychosomatic fevers' rather than an undiagnosed chronic infection. This is why I dropped that phrase. Additionally, although elevated temperatures can be factitious (fake,) outside of the possible exception of the ultimate yoga master - they are never psychosomatic.

This article needs to be fleshed out with details of her work. My plan is to use quotes from her rather recently published essays. Nancy Sculerati MD 10:42, 16 November 2006 (CST)

Something of interest: Nightingale and James Barry

This is simply for the interest of the persons who do contribute to this article - not everything is pertinent. I have been interested in James Barry since she was the first to perform a Caesarian section in S Africa with both mother and baby living, and truly transformed the living conditions of British troops, first in Cape Town and later the world over, arguably doing much more good by prevention, than any amount of battle damage control did. There was an interesting interaction between the lady and the officer in Crimea - they had some kind of very severe disagreement, but no-one seems to know the reason. My pet theory - and nice and romantic - is that Nightingale knew that Barry was a female, but that Barry's very powerful connections prevented N anything about that. The extreme animosity carried on for the rest of their lives, and Nightingale's increased influence in high circles thwarted Barry's chances of being knighted. Barry was streets years ahead of Nightingale in terms of insistence on hygiene, and some believe N's somewhat belated recognition of hygiene is simply because she refused to believe her enemy's ideas. In contrast to Barry, Nightingale seemed to have had no idea of how rife and dangerous the use of alcohol by the troops were - pneumonia due to alcoholic stupor induced hypothermia was probably the major non-combat killer (think Canada in winter). --Christo Muller 11:12, 12 February 2007 (CST)