The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2

THE LIFE OF FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE MACMILLAN AND CO., Limited LONDON · BOMBAY · CALCUTTA MELBOURNE THE MACMILLAN COMPANY NEW YORK · BOSTON · CHICAGO DALLAS · SAN FRANCISCO THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Ltd. TORONTO

Florence Nightingale 1887 from the picture by Sir William Richmond at Claydon
BY SIR EDWARD COOK IN TWO VOLUMES VOL. II (1862–1910) MACMILLAN AND CO., LIMITED ST. MARTIN'S STREET, LONDON 1913 COPYRIGHT



The question is no less an one than this: How to create a public health department for India; how to bring a higher civilization into India. What a work, what a noble task for a Government—no “inglorious period of our dominion” that, but a most glorious one! That would be creating India anew. For God places His own power, His own life-giving laws in the hands of man. He permits man to create mankind by those laws, even as He permits man to destroy mankind by neglect of those laws.—Florence Nightingale: How People may live and not die in India , 1864.

But tasks in hours of insight will'd Can be through hours of gloom fulfill'd.
Matthew Arnold.
The years immediately after Sidney Herbert's death were among the busiest and most useful in Miss Nightingale's life. She was engaged during them in carrying their “joint work unfinished” into a new field. In the previous volume we saw Miss Nightingale using her position as the heroine of the Crimean War in order to become the founder of modern nursing, and to initiate reforms for the welfare of the British soldier. Among those who know, it is recognized that the services which she rendered to the British army at home were hardly greater than those which she was able to render to British India, and it was this Indian work which after Sidney Herbert's death became one of the main interests of her life. She threw herself into it, as we shall hear, with full fire, and brought to it abundant energy and resource. But first she had the memory of her friend to honour and protect; and then the hours of gloom were to be deepened by the loss of another friend hardly less dear to her.