ABSTRACT

The discourse that surrounds nineteenth-century nursing is dominated by Florence Nightingale’s work to transform nursing from being a disreputable job performed by uneducated drunkards to that of an acceptable vocation for single women. Much of the reverence for Nightingale as the founder of modern nursing are based on half-truths found within E.T. Cook’s (1913) biography, The Life of Florence Nightingale. This reverence includes the misconception that Nightingale’s Notes on Nursing: What It Is and What It Is Not (1859) was the first nursing book of its kind. However, over twenty books about nursing praxis were published in Western countries between the mid-eighteenth and mid-nineteenth centuries. Several of these books were written by women to assist other women performing nursing work. This paper examines three of these books – The Good Nurse (1825), The Family Nurse (1837) and Advices Concerning the Sick (c. 1847) – and compares their guiding principles to those found in Notes on Nursing and other key works by Nightingale. The findings from this comparative analysis demonstrates that Nightingale’s writings about what nursing ought to be were not unique nor original. Instead, they were aligned with the prevailing ideology of the period – nurses were required to be good and do good to make others look good.

摘要

围绕 19 世纪护理的讨论以弗洛伦斯·南丁格尔 (Florence Nightingale) 的工作为主，他将护理从一项由未受过教育的酒鬼从事的声名狼藉的工作转变为单身女性可以接受的职业。许多对南丁格尔作为现代护理学创始人的崇敬是基于在 ET Cook（1913 年）的传记《佛罗伦萨南丁格尔的生平》中发现的半真半假的事实。这种崇敬包括对南丁格尔的护理笔记的误解：它是什么，它不是什么(1859) 是同类中的第一本护理书籍。然而，在 18 世纪中叶和 19 世纪中叶之间，西方国家出版了 20 多本关于护理实践的书籍。其中有几本书是由女性撰写的，旨在帮助其他女性从事护理工作。本文考察了其中三本书——好护士 ( The Good Nurse ) (1825)、家庭护士 ( The Family Nurse ) (1837) 和Advices Concerning the Sick (c. 1847)——并将它们的指导原则与Notes on Nursing中的指导原则进行了比较以及南丁格尔的其他重要作品。这一比较分析的结果表明，南丁格尔关于护理应该是什么的著作既不是独一无二的也不是原创的。相反，他们与那个时期的主流意识形态保持一致——护士必须做好事，做好事才能让别人看起来不错。