Florence Nightingale and Responsibility for Healthcare in the Home

What is it about?

Who should be responsible for funding and providing healthcare? Is it the state? Private individuals? Charities and philanthropists? Is caring just a job, or also a (religious) vocation? This article looks at this question in the context of the career of Florence Nightingale. Nightingale lived through, and contributed to, significant early developments in the emergence of the welfare state. It shows that her ideal vision of care combined multiple elements: attachment to a local community, a sense of religious vocation, and the scalability and fundraising of national or governmental organizations.

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