Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not.

The origin of modern nursing. First edition, early issue — probably the third or fourth — with advertisements on the endpapers and 'the right of translation is reserved' on the title.

On her return from the Crimean War a public subscription was raised to found a school of nursing. Notes on Nursing was published six months before it opened and was intended, 'not as a textbook, but as a book of hints for those nursing in the hospital ward and in the domestic sick room. The principles of hygiene and sanitation which Nightingale had applied with such success in the military hospital at Scutari, in the Crimea, were fundamental... Notes on Nursing described in great practical detail the nurse's duties in supplying her patient's needs, and it indicated a new and more responsible role for nurses, one that required proper training and medical knowledge. Notes on Nursing was the first major work on it subject and remained influential for many years' (Grolier, One Hundred Book Famous in Medicine 71).

First edition, early issue; 8vo; chart within the text; original brown pebble-grain cloth rebacked to style, title to upper board gilt, yellow endpapers printed with publisher's ads, contemporary stationer's blind stamp to the front free endpaper, 1 contemporary and 2 later ownership signatures to front pastedown, cloth a little bubbled primarily on the lower board, corners bumped, very good condition; 79pp.

Grolier, One Hundred Books Famous in Medicine 71; Hook and Norman, The Norman Library of Science and Medicine 1600-1602.