Princes and the Puppet of Printing; Napoleon and the trauma of 
industrial change; Chaplin, the public conscience of the movie; 
Hitler, the tribal totem of radio; and Florence Nightingale, the 
first singer of human woe by telegraph wire.

     Florence Nightingale (1820­1910), wealthy and refined 
member of the powerful new English group engendered by 
industrial power, began to pick up human-distress signals, as a 
young lady. They were quite undecipherable at first. They upset 
her entire way of life, and couldn’t be adjusted to her image of 
parents or friends or suitors. It was sheer genius that enabled 
her to translate the new diffused anxiety and dread of life into 
the idea of deep human involvement and hospital reform. She 
began to think, as well as to live, her time, and she discovered 
the new formula for the electronic age: Medicare. Care of the 
body became balm for the nerves in the age that had extended