Florence Nightingale and her contribution to nursing
What was the short-term significance of Florence Nightingale in bringing about change in nursing practice in the 1860s.
In the Dickens book “Martin Chuzzlewit” the character Mrs Gamp a nurse, was dirty, fat, and old and also a drunk, which was like most nurses of those days before Nightingale. One can say that because of this, nursing was not seen as a highly regarded profession. Source A supports the view of Mrs Gamp being a true portrayal of nurses in the 1800s. It is an article from the Telegraph by Robbie Collin, he is writing about the character Mrs Gamp and he says “Dickens wrote that Mrs Gamp was, ‘four-and-twenty years ago, a fair representation of the hired attendant on the poor in sickness,’ and she was so popular with Victorian readers that it took Florence Nightingale’s efforts in the Crimea to steer the public perception of nurses away from the Gamp stereotype”. Dickens published this book in parts between 1843-1844 and thought of the character Mrs Gamp as ‘highly realistic’ and used the description of a nurse from his friend, Angela Burdett-Coutts1, when creating Mrs Gamp’s characteristics. This gives an insight as to what nurses were like pre Florence Nightingale and how she made a drastic change to the perception and status of nurses.
In the early 1800s most hospitals were dirty, unsanitary and poorly planned buildings. Nurses were usually uneducated in medicine, and did not have much experience in the field2. They were almost always uncouth and ignorant, as well as being drunks and prone to promiscuity. Florence was told by the head nurse in a London hospital that she “had never known a nurse who was not drunken” and that most of the nurses engaged in “immoral conduct” with the patients in the wards3. They were either servants from working class backgrounds or predominantly Catholic nuns. People didn’t go to hospitals, unless they were poor, wealthier people had nurses in the home, and in the main they were seen as servants. It was possible
In the Dickens book “Martin Chuzzlewit” the character Mrs Gamp a nurse, was dirty, fat, and old and also a drunk, which was like most nurses of those days before Nightingale. One can say that because of this, nursing was not seen as a highly regarded profession. Source A supports the view of Mrs Gamp being a true portrayal of nurses in the 1800s. It is an article from the Telegraph by Robbie Collin, he is writing about the character Mrs Gamp and he says “Dickens wrote that Mrs Gamp was, ‘four-and-twenty years ago, a fair representation of the hired attendant on the poor in sickness,’ and she was so popular with Victorian readers that it took Florence Nightingale’s efforts in the Crimea to steer the public perception of nurses away from the Gamp stereotype”. Dickens published this book in parts between 1843-1844 and thought of the character Mrs Gamp as ‘highly realistic’ and used the description of a nurse from his friend, Angela Burdett-Coutts1, when creating Mrs Gamp’s characteristics. This gives an insight as to what nurses were like pre Florence Nightingale and how she made a drastic change to the perception and status of nurses.
In the early 1800s most hospitals were dirty, unsanitary and poorly planned buildings. Nurses were usually uneducated in medicine, and did not have much experience in the field2. They were almost always uncouth and ignorant, as well as being drunks and prone to promiscuity. Florence was told by the head nurse in a London hospital that she “had never known a nurse who was not drunken” and that most of the nurses engaged in “immoral conduct” with the patients in the wards3. They were either servants from working class backgrounds or predominantly Catholic nuns. People didn’t go to hospitals, unless they were poor, wealthier people had nurses in the home, and in the main they were seen as servants. It was possible