Inner contradiction of Florence Nightingale and the conformation of modern nursing : through reformation of public hygiene in London and Barrack Hospital at Scutari

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  • F.ナイチンゲールの近代看護の確立 : 科学とキリスト教信仰という内的矛盾を抱えて
  • F. ナイチンゲール ノ キンダイ カンゴ ノ カクリツ : カガク ト キリストキョウ シンコウ ト イウ ナイテキ ムジュン オ カカエテ
  • F.ナイチンゲールの近代看護の確立 : 科学とキリスト教信仰という内在的矛盾を抱えて
  • F.ナイチンゲール ノ キンダイ カンゴ ノ カクリツ : カガク ト キリストキョウ シンコウ ト イウ ナイザイテキ ムジュン オ カカエテ

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Abstract

In the middle of the 19th century, immigrants who escaped from the Great Famine came over from Ireland and other regions into London. They came to live around the southern bank of the Thames River, where they formed a huge Irish town, The river flew through an area brimmed over with excreta and stench and caused different epidemics. Poverty and lack of sanitation became the most important matter in London and demanded an immediate solution. The New Poor Law was established by Chadwick in 1834. Both Catholic and Protestant nursing sisters did the relief work around the area in order to save the sick poor. General hospitals enlarged their wards ad established one medical school after another. Nightingale was not allowed to leave her house and could not follow her call to become a nurse for eight years, during this time the situation of medical care and public health in London were rapidly transformed. However, the eight –year’s collecting information and thinking in her house gave her a lot of knowledge about nursing, sanitation, and religion. She read information about reformation of public health and learned Chadwick’s Miasmatic theory and medical statistician Farr’s zymotic diseases theory. When she went to the Crimean War as a matron, both Miasmatic theory and zymotic disease theory led her to the reformation of sanitation in the hospital as Scutari where she worked. Nightingale is considered a scientist because she mastered medical statistics and was well informed on medicine and sanitation. On the other hand it should not be forgotten that she was a Christian. Her guiding principle was to practice nursing following the teachings of Jesus Christ. There is a contradiction between science and Christianity. Nightingale had the contradiction in her mind. It was this contradiction in her mind that was useful to establish modern nursing because nurses must be concerned with the humanity scope of patients. They have to support recovery from illness and give patients the power to live independently. Nightingale said on one of her essays, “A nurse must have an three-fold interest in her work: an intellectual interest in the case, a hearty interest in the patient, a technical interest in the patient’s care and cure.”

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