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conversations.value: a description for a book titled Florence Nightingale about Prize, Biography, Gladstone with the genre: Biographies & Memoirs, Specific Groups
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conversations.value: the author won the Gladstone Memorial Prize at Oxford University. His first book Vera Brittain: A Life was shortlisted for the Whitbread Biography Prize, the NCR Non-Fiction Award, and the Fawcett Prize. His books also include the bestselling Letters from a Lost Generation; Lives for Sale, a collection of biographers' tales; Because You Died; and The Fateful Year. England 1914 published in 2014. Florence Nightingale was awarded the Elizabeth Longford Prize for Historical Biography.
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conversations.value: a description for a book titled Florence Nightingale about Nightingale's, English, Europe with the genre: Children's Books, Growing Up & Facts of Life. End with the sentence ' Anne's Episcopal School, Middleton, DE'.
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conversations.value: Gr 14Nightingale was born in 1820 to a wealthy English family. She lived a privileged existence, and, due to her parents' social status, she was afforded the opportunity to meet famous artists and politicians and see the world. It was on her travels that she became aware of the tremendous need for improved health care for all and became convinced that she should become a nurse. She spent a great deal of time visiting hospitals and studying best practices. She became a compassionate, hardworking nurse who raised the standard of cleanliness and organization in military hospitals, women's facilities, and workhouses in Europe and beyond. This beautifully illustrated picture book is comprehensive in scope, providing the perfect balance of interesting facts from her early life on into adulthood. Readers will gain an understanding of Nightingale's work ethic, trials, and accomplishments. Each page is fully adorned with colorful paintings that artfully depict life in the 1800s. There are also intricate patterns woven throughout that add texture and depth and reflect the time period. Students will linger on each page, soaking in the details and seeing connections with modern-day practices that were inspired by Nightingale's tireless work. the author's attention to detail and thorough descriptions make this biography one to own.Amy Shepherd, St. Anne's Episcopal School, Middleton, DE
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conversations.value: the first five paragraphs for this book
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conversations.value: Florence Nightingale
  As her year as superintendent came to a close, Nightingale informed the ladies' committee that she was resigning. The hospital was running smoothly, and she needed a bigger challenge. Lady Canning responded, "We well know that the great work you have always had at heart, namely, to improve hospital nursing, cannot be carried in such an institution as this." Canning continued, "We hope that the order and system you have established may enable another lady superintendent to carry in the institution with some degree of success, though we are without the slightest hope of meeting with your equal."
  Nightingale left her post in August 1854, just as cholera was showing up in a crowded section of London. This killer disease came on suddenly. A person might feel fine one day and be overcome by severe vomiting and watery diarrhea the next. The person's eyes looked sunken, and the skin grew gray, loose, and clammy. Other signs of dehydration were more ominous: a weak, rapid pulse, a struggle to breathe, and seizures. Death often followed quickly. Cholera sent its victim "to the vast abyss of eternity, to the presence of his Maker, almost before he has recovered from the first surprise of his attack," as one doctor dramatically put it. Before long, this outbreak grew into the worst one London had yet seen. One hundred and twenty-seven people died in the first three days of September. A week later, the death toll had reached five hundred.
  Doctors and scientists had come up with theories to explain cholera. According to the animalcular theory, "microscopic insects" invaded the body, causing disease. Some experts preferred the fungoid theory, which attributed cholera to an unknown fungus. There was also a telluric theory, which blamed a poison rising from the earth, and an electric theory, which pointed to "fluctuations of the atmospheric electricity." Additionally, the ozonic theory stated that cholera arose when there was too little ozone in the atmosphere.
  Many people, including , accepted the miasma theory to explain disease. They believed that foul air released by rotting vegetable matter, dead animals, or decomposing corpses caused people to get sick. This deadly air, or miasma, could even arise from stagnant water. "The poison may be wafted east and west, north and south, on the winds of heaven, on the garments of the passerby," warned Dr. Edward T. Roe of the board of health in Plymouth, England. The best way to keep people well and help the sick recover was through sanitation, Roe and others taught. They called for better ventilation to bring "fresh air in the place of the deadly poison passing from the bodies of the dying."
  Nightingale volunteered at London's Middlesex Hospital, where she supervised the care of cholera victims brought in from surrounding neighborhoods. "The prostitutes come in perpetually—poor creatures staggering off their beat!... One poor girl, loathsomely filthy, came in, and was dead in four hours," a friend recalled her saying. Nightingale worked day and night, removing patients' dirty clothes and placing cloths soaked in turpentine on their abdomens. These "turpentine stupes" were believed to ease internal upset.
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conversations.value: five more paragraphs
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conversations.value: Hoping to avoid a grand, noisy welcome, the pair traveled as a mother and daughter, Mrs. and Miss Smith. They parted in London, and Flo took a train to Derbyshire. She then walked the mile and a half from the station to Lea Hurst. Her family knew she was back only when their housekeeper looked out a window and spotted her passing through the back gate. Florence entered the house quietly, "like a bird," Parthenope said. Her return was "a blessing," Mrs. Nightingale thought, "for which we cannot be too thankful." "A little tinkle of the small church bell on the hills, and a thanksgiving prayer at the little chapel next day" were all that marked her homecoming, according to Parthe.
  Chef Alexis Soyer had the covered wagon from Nightingale's final trip to the Crimean Peninsula transported to England. It was later put on display.
  A few weeks later, Parthe reported to Liz Herbert that Flo showed little improvement. Illness had sapped her strength, "& I cannot believe that she will live long," Parthe wrote. "I see she does not think so herself, not that she ever says so." Rest was impossible for Florence, because so many matters demanded her attention. Once word that she was home had spread, gifts and letters poured in as never before. She spent hours responding to strangers who were requesting everything from money to a donkey, and to ordinary citizens sending their thanks.
  Before setting out for home, Nightingale had sent three youths to England. They carried a letter to her family with instructions to make sure these "Crimean treasures" received schooling. The first lad was a sailor named William Jones who had lost a leg in the war; Nightingale would later find him work. The second was the loyal drummer boy, Thomas. The third was a twelve-year-old Russian orphan, Peter Grillage, who had been captured and taken to one of the hospitals. He later became a servant at Embley. The boys brought with them a fourth treasure, an enormous puppy named Roosh. Some soldiers had discovered Roosh in the streets of Scutari, abandoned and starving, and had given him to Nightingale. He too found a home on the Nightingale estates.
  She also pondered what to do with the rest of her life. Living quietly at home was out of the question for a woman who felt called to serve. She could open a training school for nurses; in fact, some of London's leading citizens had established a fund expressly for this purpose. Donations arrived from all over England. Wealthy families made large contributions; churches took up collections; soldiers gave what they could. The famed Swedish opera singer Jenny Lind raised nearly nineteen hundred pounds at a benefit concert in London. By summer 1856, the Nightingale Fund held more than forty-four thousand pounds, an amount worth millions of U.S. dollars today.
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conversations.value: the last paragraph
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