The year 2010 marks the centenary of the birth of Florence Nightingale and will, no doubt, be universally remembered. Her life and nursing career have recently been fully described by Bostridge. It is less well known that her neighbour from November 1856 was the distinguished Scottish physician Sir John Forbes MD Edin FRCP Lond FRS DCL Oxon. Although they never met, they exchanged copies of each other’s books and shared a mutual respect.
AgnewRAL. Sir John Forbes (1787–1861) and Miss Florence Nightingale (1820–1910): an unlikely association?Vesalius2001; VII: 36–44.
2.
NightingaleF. Notes on nursing: what it is, and what it is not, 1st ed. London: Harrison and Sons, 1860.
3.
Forbes J. Of nature and art in the cure of disease. London: John Churchill, 1857. 2nd ed., 1858.
4.
Nightingale F. Notes on hospitals. London: John W Parker and Son, 1859. 3rd ed. almost completely rewritten. Longmans, Green and Co, 1863.
5.
BostridgeM. Florence Nightingale: the woman and her legend, London: Penguin Books, 2009.
6.
Nightingale F. Letters from Egypt. A journey on the Nile, 1849–1850. London: first edited and printed privately by her sister, Parthenope, in 1854. Illustrated edition selected and introduced by Anthony Sattin. Barrie & Jenkins Ltd, 1987:17.
7.
Op.cit. ref. 5: pp. 246–249. The mortality rate at Scutari peaked at 33% in February 1855; on 4 March a Sanitary Commission team, including three sanitary inspectors from Liverpool, arrived but the causes of any subsequent decline in deaths are generally accepted as being multifactorial.
8.
Woodham-Smith C. Florence Nightingale (1820–1910). London: Constable, 1950: 338.
9.
Goldie SM, ed. ‘I have done my duty.’ Florence Nightingale in the Crimean war. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1987. Florence Nightingale-Letters from the Crimea 1854–1856. Manchester: MANDOLIN an imprint of Manchester University Press, 2nd ed., 1997.
10.
SakulaA. ‘I have done my duty’: Florence Nightingale in the Crimean war 1854–56. Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine1990; 83: 202–202.
Agnew RAL. Clark, Sir James, first baronet (1788–1870). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; 2–3, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/printable/5463 (accessed 13 December 2012).
13.
Op. cit. ref. 5: p. 303.
14.
Nightingale F. Notes on matters affecting the health, efficiency, and hospital administration of the British Army. Founded chiefly on the experience of the late war. Presented by request to the secretary for war. Printed privately by Miss Nightingale. London: Harrison and Sons, 1858. In the Preface (p. 2), FN cites the example of the appalling sickness rates in Walcheren (1809).
15.
Anon. Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sidney_Herbert_1stBaronHerbert_of_Lea (accessed 25 May 2011). It was Herbert who sent FN to the Crimea and who championed the movement for reform at the War Office after the war. The effort caused his health to break down resulting in his resignation from Office in July 1861, and his death on 2 August 1861.
16.
Op. cit. ref. 8: p. 270. Clark was also included in a sub-committee to negotiate the establishment of the Nightingale Training School at St Thomas’ Hospital.
17.
Op. cit. ref. 11: p. 5.
18.
Op. cit. ref. 5: pp. 281, 282, 325.
19.
Geddes AM, Bryceson ADM and Thin RN. Diseases due to infection. In: Edwards CRW and Boucher IAD (eds) Davidson’s Principles & Practice of Medicine. 16th ed. Edinburgh, London, Melbourne, New York and Tokyo: Churchill Livingstone, 1991: 130.
20.
Op. cit. ref. 8: p. 327.
21.
Ibid. p. 328.
22.
Op.cit. ref. 5: p. 408.
23.
Agnew RAL. The life of Sir John Forbes (1787–1861). Hove, West Sussex: Bernard Durnford Publishing, 2002; 49.
24.
Agnew RAL. Forbes, Sir John (1787–1861). In: Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004; 3, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/9841 (accessed 3 December 2012).
Op. cit. ref. 6: pp. 207–208. By coincidence FN shared the Nile journey with the 28 year old Frenchman of later (1857) Madam Bovary fame. Although they never met, this was an even more unlikely rencontre than that with Forbes!.
