Notes on FN: Health in India

Florence Nightingale on Health in India, At Page 461

(I feel impressed to record some impressions that I am sitting with presently as I am trying to further understand why I am being drawn to consider this text. The Spirit of the Lord bids me to continue to consider these texts urgently. The feelings grow increasingly stronger from day to day. This started several years ago with a series of impression that I thought were related to a proposed film project, but now I don’t know. And now, this grows increasingly urgent for me.)

Where I am at in my reading, I am observing how FN was very instrumental in organizing a set of commissions in helping to execute the sanitary improvements that were designed to preserve and improve life in India. The organization proposed in a dual set of commissions was designed to impart the practical knowledge already obtained in England concerning sanitary improvements and give it to the working government organizations in India. Or better said, the plan was to create government-sponsored departments to transfer and execute this knowledge effectively, without human pride or jealousies getting in the way of progress and realizing the full scope of improvements that were required to realize life-saving change.

( I will say that I have much shifted my perspectives on working in groups with able-bodied peoples of experience as I read through FN’s notes and letters. )

As I’ve already stated, the end objective was transferring knowledge from one government to another for the benefit of the people. This is doing good. I am also observing how this effort started with an exhaustive report that led people to consider the action to be taken. In India, government officials took the fruits of the report and attempted to implement the findings of the report into actionable plans, yet without the expertise of the English to suggest the right way or better way of doing things.

Questions that I am wrestling with:

  • Where am I to go with this information?
  • I am generally adverse to large agri-business productions. Am I being asked to consider my part in it? (I have no education or experience in anything of the sort.)
  • What is the practical application for me in all this?

(These are essentially all the same question.)

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