Florence Nightingale Ward: Surgeon, Healer, Homeopath

I’m currently working on the biography of Dr. Florence Nightingale Ward, a surgeon and homeopath from the turn of the past century. When I was completing my B.A. degree at Mills College a few years ago, I wrote my senior thesis on Florence. A slightly edited version of this paper was published in 2005 in Volume 11 of The American Homeopath.

Here’s a little lead-in to the paper, to give you a feel for it. You can download the whole thing from the links below — one version includes pictures, and the other is just text, in case you want a smaller download. As I work on Florence’s biography, I’ll be adding more information to this page:

The types of health care available to Americans in the mid-nineteenth century were the most varied in the industrializing western world. Traditional medical practitioners; herbalists, also known as “Indian Doctors”; the Thomsonian “every man a doctor” school of botanical medicine; and last but not least, the homeopaths, were only the top four of many candidates for the handling of America’s medical needs...

The 1880s saw a schism in the American homeopathic movement. A small group of conservative homeopaths who fought for homeopathic purity stood against the large number of liberals who wanted homeopathy to be assimilated into mainstream medicine. This conflict nearly led to the extinction of the discipline in the United States. The practice of Florence Nightingale Ferguson Saltonstall Ward, M.D. (1860-1919) illustrates this tension...

Ward’s example is particularly worthy of study in that she was a woman with both a successful career and a family at a time when many did not consider this either suitable or even achievable...

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Florence Ward: Medical Sectarian or Medical Scientist? (PDF with images [about 1 MB])

Florence Ward: Medical Sectarian or Medical Scientist? (PDF with text only [about 400 MB])


                   

The State of California does not offer licenses in homeopathic medicine, and Edi Pfeiffer is not a physician. Homeopathy is alternative and complementary to healing arts that are licensed by the State of California. Under Sections 2053.5 and 2053.6 of California’s Business and Professions Code (commonly known as the Medical Practice Act), Edi may offer services in homeopathy as long as she meets certain requirements and restrictions, which are described here.