{"id":217,"date":"2010-07-22T17:00:33","date_gmt":"2010-07-22T16:00:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.florence-nightingale-avenging-angel.co.uk\/blog\/?p=217"},"modified":"2025-01-19T21:35:40","modified_gmt":"2025-01-19T20:35:40","slug":"florence-nightingale-illness","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.florence-nightingale-avenging-angel.co.uk\/blog\/florence-nightingale-illness\/","title":{"rendered":"Depression: the diagnosis that wasn&#8217;t"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>Florence Nightingale nearly died from an illness during the Crimean War, probably caught from drinking untreated milk. This disease, brucellosis, can produce recurring fevers for years afterwards. But some writers have claimed that brucellosis made her neurotic. There is no medical justification for their claim, which has been used to discredit her achievements in later life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.co.uk\/dp\/0957279760\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"161\" height=\"242\" class=\"alignleft  wp-image-2971\" src=\"http:\/\/www.florence-nightingale-avenging-angel.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/kindle-cover-with-author-200x300.jpg\" alt=\"Click to see book\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.florence-nightingale-avenging-angel.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/kindle-cover-with-author-200x300.jpg 200w, https:\/\/www.florence-nightingale-avenging-angel.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/kindle-cover-with-author-683x1024.jpg 683w, https:\/\/www.florence-nightingale-avenging-angel.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/kindle-cover-with-author-768x1152.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.florence-nightingale-avenging-angel.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/kindle-cover-with-author-1024x1536.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.florence-nightingale-avenging-angel.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/kindle-cover-with-author-1365x2048.jpg 1365w, https:\/\/www.florence-nightingale-avenging-angel.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/kindle-cover-with-author-100x150.jpg 100w, https:\/\/www.florence-nightingale-avenging-angel.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/kindle-cover-with-author-400x600.jpg 400w, https:\/\/www.florence-nightingale-avenging-angel.co.uk\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/kindle-cover-with-author-scaled.jpg 1707w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 161px) 85vw, 161px\" \/><\/a>Read about her illness and the multiple efforts over the years to use it against her, in\u00a0<em>Florence Nightingale&#8217;s Pandemic. <\/em>The book reveals just how inconvenient she was to those with property and power, how she changed the law to save millions of people from fatal epidemic disease, and how we have misrepresennted her as &#8216;just a nurse&#8217;.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Meanwhile, here&#8217;s a scientific account of her probable case of brucellosis:<br>Link to Dr. D A B Young&#8217;s paper on <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov\/pmc\/articles\/PMC2539100\/\">Florence Nightingale&#8217;s Fever<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Some authors believe that Nightingale suffered from depression as a symptom of brucellosis <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"parent":0,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"spay_email":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-217","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v24.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>What was Florence Nightingale&#039;s illness?<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Some have claimed that her illness made her depressed or neurotic. 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