Nightingale is one of the most famous women of all time. She was greatly revered in her own lifetime and indeed for some decades after her death she was a symbol of virtue and feminine heroism. In recent decades all this has changed, and she has been attacked from within the nursing profession, by medical doctors, historians and other academics. Her contribution to the cause of women has been challenged as well as her own character, relations with women and even identification as a woman. This volume permits a serious and thorough examination of all these issues: Nightingale’s views of and relationships with women and her work on central.
