ABSTRACT

Florence Nightingale returned from the Crimean War a national heroine and the possessor of the £44,039 Nightingale Fund, the gift of a grateful nation to recognize 'the noble exertions of Miss Nightingale in the hospitals of the East.' The Nightingale Training School which she established at St. Thomas's Hospital had become the model for nurse training throughout the English-speaking world, and Nightingale was then and later hailed as the founder of modern nursing. Nineteenth-century nursing reform began at the close of the Napoleonic wars with individual doctors voluntarily giving nurses instruction in their wards. In 1875, Nightingale had a second opportunity to experiment with nursing in the colonies when the governors of the Montreal General Hospital in Canada invited Maria Machin to be their superintendent of nurses. In conclusion, was Nightingale really the founder of modern nursing? One could make a good argument that Nightingale's contributions to modern nursing were largely destructive.