Two BBC-made documentaries on Florence Nightingale are currently being sold in the UK as teaching aids. A group of academics, however, have called for them to be recalled. They claim these films demean Miss Nightingale by portraying her as “a manipulative, neurotic and sexually repressed woman who inadvertently killed troops during the Crimean War through medical error.”

They also criticise the BBC for being sexist in referring to her by her first name. They say a documentary on Charles Darwin for example would never call him “Charlie”.

The group, led by Professor Lynn MacDonald from the University of Guelph in Canada, called on the BBC to withdraw from shops copies of Florence Nightingale: Iron Maiden and Reputations: Florence Nightingale.

Here’s a part of their letter to the BBC:

We ask the BBC to (preferably) withdraw the two hostile films, at the very least to identify them as including unsubstantiated and fictional portrayals of Nightingale. Of course scholars may differ in interpretation, but still the BBC’s record is appalling. Not one of the academics used to attack Nightingale ever published his/her accusations in a peer-reviewed book or journal.

[Source: Daily Mail]