"To be a good nurse one must be a good woman, or one is truly nothing but a tinkling bell."
"Is Pyaemia indigenous in the population of Paris?
Did she only help to emancipate middle class women, or did she also help the lower classes?
She contributed to women’s emancipation in three ways. First, she made it easier for women to become nurses. She aimed primarily at middle-class women but did take in some working class women as well. Second, she showed women how to be efficient protectors of their families’ health (through her Notes on Nursing and other self-help booklets and programs). This "home nursing" advice was aimed at any woman who could read. Notes on Nursing is written in very simple language obviously intended for readers with only basic literacy. It was aimed at "everywoman" (according to the preface to the book) and was very influential. The book was a best seller and changed ordinary working-class women into the guardians of their families' health. This was part of Nightingale’s successful strategy to reduce the very high mortality from preventible disease. A third contribution she made to women's emancipation was that she helped to abolish regulations on prostitution that were unfair to women. Obviously this affected lower class women.
"Its indigenous state however appears to me to be sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that Puerperal fever is of very common occurrence in Paris, frequently endemic, & assuredly Puerperal fever is a form of Purulent infection. I believe too in the existence, among the lower classes, of this disease which would be called Pyaemia, if any local suppuration had existed. When this is not the case, it takes a Typhoid form, and pus, often in large quantities, may be found after death, in various parts of the body, particularly in the Serous of Synovial Cavities, though the patients may not have had any suppurating surface during life.
"Purulent infection is indigenous in this country & owes its origin to the...