Volume 48, Number 4 · March 8, 2001
The Mysterious Miss Nightingale
By Helen Epstein
Florence Nightingale: Avenging Angel
by Hugh Small
St. Martin's, 221 pp., $35.00
Public Health and Social Justice in the Age of Chadwick: Britain 1800–1854
by Christopher Hamlin
Cambridge University Press, 368 pp., $64.95
Florence Nightingale: Mystic, Visionary, Healer
by Barbara Dossey
Springhouse, 440 pp., $54.95
From a public relations point of view, the Crimean War did not go well for Great Britain. The recent Limited Services Act permitted ordinary middle-class men to spend short periods on military duty, and gentlemen could now see for themselves the horrors of war. Moreover, photographers and reporters for the first time sent firsthand dispatches from the front. Members of the British public, with the new political power they had gained from the expanded franchise under the Reform Bill of 1832, read with dismay in the daily papers as 'the best army that ever left these shores' succumbed to cannon fire, starvation, and disease, in a war fought in a faraway country, for obscure reasons.
Review, 4839 words
To read the full text of this piece, please choose one of the following options:
|
If you are already a subscriber to the Review's electronic edition, please sign in: |
To subscribe to the electronic edition, please press the button below. |
To purchase access to this article for $3, please press the button below. |