ABSTRACT
Nightingale's vision caught on. To discover the full extent of this ethos, a comprehensive and systematic examination of hitherto unresearched reference textbooks, which provided the content of nurse training for a century, is undertaken in this chapter. According to Seymer, Nightingale articulated the unchanging principles underlying all good nursing: the correct balance of theory and practice, an insistence on the thorough mastery of nursing techniques, and firmly supported 'above all with her high ethical ideals'. Lees's introduction expanded on the purpose of nursing as the paramount duty of civilisation, concerned as it was with issues of life and death, and in which nurses were privileged to be involved. Nursing was not merely work that carried with it certain duties and consequent obligations, 'something more' was needed if the patient were to be considered first. The chapter also discusses the moral basis of nursing, and the importance of developing the nurse's virtuous character.
