"NOTES ON HOSPITALS" BY FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE (1820 - 1910) English nurse and hospital reformer, she headed a team of nurses in the Crimean War, and later founded the first institution for the training of nurses. "Notes on Hospitals: Being Two Papers Read Before the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science, at Liverpool, In October, 1858. With Evidence Given to the Royal Commissioners on the State of the Army in 1857", by Florence Nightingale (London: John W. Parker and Son), 2nd edition, 1859, 110pp. 8vo., in which Nightingale addresses the deficiencies of the hospitals she visited during the Crimean War, including poor ventilation, lack of light, poor sanitation, and a lack of staff, concluding that most of the soldiers who died in hospitals during the war were killed by the poor conditions there, and not as a direct result of their wounds. She recommends a number of advances designed to alleviate these deficiencies, which resulted in an overall decrease of peacetime deaths in the army. Includes five fold-out appendices, one listing the admission and death rates in British military hospitals during the Crimean War, and three containing floor plans of Vincennes Military Hospital in France, the Royal Victoria Hospital in Netley, and the Hospital de Lariboisiere in Paris. The last is a plan for an ideal hospital, based on Nightingale's philosophies. The book is rebound in a modern binding of brown cloth boards. The title page, the foldouts, and several interior pages each bear the stamp of the Medical Society of Edinburgh. Very good.