This study of the personality and achievements of Florence Nightingale is based on extensive research and unpublished material. She achieved fame for her leadership of a group of British nurses during the Crimean War, and afterwards she dedicated herself to promoting public health. Following a collapse at age 37, she remained bedridden for more than ten years and became one of history's most famous invalids. Hugh Small has produced a new and startling explanation of Florence Nightingale's actions, comparing the conflicting contemporary accounts of what really happened in her hospital at Scutari during the war and uncovering an official cover-up of a public health disaster for which Nightingale felt personally responsible.

Florence Nightingale

Biographies & Memoirs

Small, Hugh

Community & Culture

Constable

The Crimean War was the most destructive conflict of Queen Victoria’s reign, the outcome of which was indecisive; most historians see it as an irrelevant, unnecessary conflict despite Florence Nightingale and the Charge of the Light Brigade. Here Hugh Small shows how the history of the Crimean War has been manipulated to conceal Britain’s—and Europe’s—failure. The war governments and early historians combined to withhold the truth from an already disappointed nation in a deception that lasted over a century. Accounts of battles, still widely believed, gave fictitious leadership roles to senior officers. Careful analysis of the fighting shows that most of Britain’s military successes in the war were achieved by the common soldiers, who understood tactics far better than the officer class and who acted usually without orders and often in contravention of them. Hugh Small’s mixture of politics and battlefield narrative identifies a turning point in history, and raises disturbing questions about the utility of war.

The Crimean War: Europe's Conflict with Russia

History

Europe

The History Press

In the winter of 1854, Britain, France, and Turkey, with Europe-wide support, invaded Russia and besieged the fortress of Sebastopol in the Crimea. It was the most destructive conflict of the century, with total fatalities comparable to those of the American Civil War. Hugh Small, whose biography of Florence Nightingale first exposed the truth about her wartime hospital, now shows how the history of the Crimean War was manipulated to conceal Britain’s – and Europe’s – failure. Only since the collapse of the Soviet Union has it become clear how much was at stake in the Crimea. The failure of Britain’s politicians to control their generals led to the collapse of the peacekeeping arrangements of the ‘Concert of Europe’ – a sort of early UN Security Council. Russian expansion continued unchecked, leading to the divisions seen today in the Ukraine and the Caucasus. Small is equally revealing about the battles. His carefully-researched account of the famous Charge of the Light Brigade overturns the standard account that it was a blunder by senior officers. It was the ordinary cavalrymen who insisted on it – as the Commander-in-Chief admitted in Parliament at the time.

The Crimean War: Queen Victoria's War With the Russian Tsars

Createspace Independent Pub

Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) achieved fame for her leadership of a group of British nurses during the Crimean War. After the war, she dedicated herself to promoting public health but at the age of 37 suffered a collapse which left her bedridden for 10 years and more. Nevertheless, despite this, she continued with her work. Hugh Small offers a new and startling explanation of Florence Nightingale's actions.

Florence Nightingale:Avenging Angel

Isis Large Print

Florence Nightingale:avenging Angel

The Future of Anarchism

Science & Math

Evolution

Knowledge Leak

This is a much revised and expanded edition of Hugh Small’s Florence Nightingale, Avenging Angel (1998), the book that first revealed the historic cover-up that had prevented Florence Nightingale from telling us what really happened in her Crimean War hospitals. This new edition subverts Nightingale’s emotionally repressed image by revealing that she had a romantic entanglement during the war, which had historic consequences for her country.Hugh Small’s new research also sheds light on the source of her power over politicians, which made her a Cabinet Minister for a whole decade when history says that such a thing was impossible for a woman. He shows for the first time how her leadership of the public health movement made a huge contribution to the unprecedented rise in life expectancy in Britain.Nightingale is one of history’s most enigmatic and controversial figures, a polymath whose combination of boundless energy and chronic illness has confounded biographers. Small debunks the latest conventional wisdom – based on a misreading of technical literature – that a chronic infection caused her to be depressed. Such theories of mental aberration marginalize Nightingale and conveniently avoid controversial analysis of her greatest achievements, which go completely against the grain of history as it is taught.

The Passion of Florence Nightingale

Historical

Amberley

Praise for Small's earlier work on Nightingale: 'Hugh Small, in a masterly piece of historical detective work, convincingly demonstrates what all previous historians and biographers have missed . . . This is a compelling psychological portrait of a very eminent (and complex) Victorian.' James Le Fanu, Daily Telegraph
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) is best known as a reformer of hospital nursing during and after the Crimean War, but many feel that her nursing reputation has been overstated. 
A Brief History of Florence Nightingale tells the story of the sanitary disaster in her wartime hospital and why the government covered it up against her wishes. After the war she worked to put the lessons of the tragedy to good use to reduce the very high mortality from epidemic disease in the civilian population at home. She did this by persuading Parliament in 1872 to pass laws which required landlords to improve sanitation in working-class homes, and to give local authorities rather than central government the power to enforce the laws. Life expectancy increased dramatically as a result, and it was this peacetime civilian public health reform rather than her wartime hospital nursing record that established Nightingale's reputation in her lifetime. 
After her death the wartime image became popular again as a means of recruiting hospital nurses and her other achievements were almost forgotten. Today, with nursing's new emphasis on 'primary' care and prevention outside hospitals, Nightingale's focus on public health achievements makes her an increasingly relevant figure.

A Brief History of Florence Nightingale: and Her Real Legacy, a Revolution in Public Health (Brief Histories)

Robinson

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