NIGHTINGALE (FLORENCE)

Notes on Matters Affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army, Founded Chiefly on the Experience of the Late War... Presented by Request to the Secretary of State for War, FIRST EDITION, AUTHOR'S PRESENTATION COPY, WITH AN AUTOGRAPH LETTER SIGNED, Printed by Harrison & Sons, 1858

Footnotes

"SO MUCH ACTION WITHOUT DESIGN & SO MUCH DESIGN WITHOUT ACTION" - PRESENTATION COPY OF FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE'S RARE GROUND-BREAKING REPORT, WITH FINE PROVENANCE. Printed at her own expense for private circulation amongst a small circle of friends and influential people, this remarkable document, which uncovered the shocking statistic that 16,000 of the 18,000 deaths in the Crimea were not due to battle wounds but to preventable diseases spread by poor sanitation, proposed a radical overhaul of the British Army's administration, sanitation and nursing practices. Although never published, "its existence was not only responsible for the setting up of the Royal Commission but also for the nature of most of its recommendations. The reforms... spread far beyond the confines of the British Army and have revolutionized hospital practice throughtthe world" (PMM). Notes also showed Nightingale to be a major innovation in terms of the use of detailed statistics and mathematical analysis to measure social phenomena.

The report came as the result of a meeting a year earlier between Nightingale and the Secretary for War, Lord Panmure, when the latter agreed to set up a Royal Commission with Nightingale's choice of Sidney Herbert as Chairman. The Commission published its own report containing detailed correspondence on the care of the sick and wounded, which Nightingale immediately incorporated in her own Notes at the very last moment. This explains the erratic pagination of the work, the additions being pages with Roman numerals.

The present copy was sent to Florence Nightingale's banker at Coutts and friend, Edward Marjoribanks: "You were one of my first protectors & have always been my steady friend./ I venture to send you a copy of a "confidential" Report of mine to the War Office... it is "confidential" really, & not to lie upon your table or be shewn to any one, please." When the Nightingale Fund was inaugurated in 1855 for the purpose of raising money to enable her to establish an institute for the training of nurses, Marjoribanks was one of five Trustees she nominated.

Provenance: Edward Marjoribanks Jr (1776-1868), autograph letter from the author sending him the book, and bookplate; Cecil Woodham-Smith CBE, 1896-1977, biographer of Florence Nightingale, book label; Hugh Small.