Notes on Nursing: What it is, and what it is not by NIGHTINGALE, Florence - 1860

London: Harrison, 1860. 1st Edition. Hardcover. Very Good. 1st Edition. Hardcover. 8vo - over 7¾ - 9¾" tall. [1860]. 8vo (218 x 140 mm). [1-5] 6-79 [1] pp. Original dark-brown pebbled cloth, title in gilt on front cover, blind-ruling to covers, endpapers with publisher's adverts (spine mostly gone, cloth rubbed and spotted, some minor wear to corners). Text with minor even browning, slight dust-soiling mostly to outer margins of pastedowns. Provenance: from a private Durch collection. ----

VERY RARE FIRST EDITION, FIRST ISSUE, without the notice "[The right of translation is reserved]" on the title-page and the textual errors uncorrected, but with the publisher's printed adverts and not the plain yellow endpapers. "The earliest known copy of the Notes is in the Nurses' Home at St. Thomas's Hospital and bears the inscription in Florence Nightingale's hand: 'For my dear Beatrice from her loving F.N. New Year's Day 1860. This copy does NOT carry '[The right of translation is reserved]' on the title page under the publisher's imprint and the end papers are plain yellow. Almost immediately the publishers put in advertisement end papers. Some time in February 1860 the book was reissued, its many textual errors still uncorrected, but with '[The right of translation is reserved]' inserted on the title page" (Bishop & Goldie. A Bio-Bibliography of Florence Nightingale, London, 1962, p.16). "Defining nursing as 'helping the patient to live,' Nightingale 'introduced the modern standards of training and esprit de corps, and early grasped the idea that diseases are not 'separate entities, which must exist, like cats and dogs,' but altered conditions, qualitative disturbances of normal physiological processes, through which the patient is passing. While she did not know the bacterial theory of infectious diseases, she realized that absolute cleanliness, fresh air, pure water, light, and efficient drainage are the surest means of preventing them" (Garrison-Morton, History of Medicine, p. 773). "A disciple of the pioneer statistician Adolphe Quetelet, Nightingale supported all of her writings with statistical evidence; a chart on page 78 of the Notes shows the number of women employed as nurses in 1851-- some of them as young as five years of age!" (Norman 1600).
References: Norman 1600; Bishop & Goldie 4(i); Lilly p. 215; Garrison-Morton 1612; Grolier Medicine 71; Eimas, Heirs of Hippocrates 1884; Osler 7737; Waller 6872. - Visit our website to see more images!