Perceptions of Nursing
The common perception of nurses had been defined by Charles Dickens, in his novel Martin Chuzzlewit (1843-44). The character Sairey Gamp is an old midwife and layer-out of the dead.
She's drunk and feckless, selfish and lazy; and deceitful - in one scene she takes the pillow from under a patient's head and puts it on her own easy chair, so she can get more comfortable!
Today her name is still shorthand for the opposite of good nursing.
Common-sense approach
Florence Nightingale's common-sense approach is summed up by her most important book: Notes on Nursing: What it is and What it is Not. It contained sections on cleanliness, including personal cleanliness; food, heat and light; nose, ventilation and other environmental factors; and variety:
"the sick suffer from seeing the same walls, the same ceiling, the same surroundings during a long confinement...subjected to a long monotony of objects about them."
As late as 1974, the Head of the Florence Nightingale School of Nursing was confident to write: "the book astonishes one with its relevance to modern attitudes and skills in nursing, whether at home, in hospital or in the community."