Florence Nightingale, heroine of the Crimean War Nursing
Service, as a child at Lea Hurst, was accustomed to minister
to the sick poor, and it so happened that the clergyman of
the parish was a man of considerable medical skill. Curiously
enough, it was an animal that first turned her thoughts to
nursing--the dog of her father’s shepherd. Poor Cap’s leg was
thought to have been broken and he was about to be destroyed,
when the girl, under the clergyman’s direction, prepared a
simple hot compress and soon had the delight of seeing her
patient convalescent. The fame of this exploit spread abroad,
and many an animal was brought to her to be healed; perhaps
that was why she always advocated that sick people should
have dumb pets about them if possible. As she grew older, the
little girl who had instinctively bandaged her broken dolls
in the most professional manner was allowed to attend to the
wounds and ailments of real people, and this at a time when
ambulance classes were unheard of, and when the only sick nurses
available were ignorant and untrained women. Miss Florence did
not find the ordinary life of a girl in society appealed to
her. With characteristic decision she gave it up and spent the
next few years in visiting hospitals in England, Ireland and
Scotland. It is easy to see now that the great want of those
days was trained women nurses, but it required exceptional
intelligence--indeed, we might almost say, a touch of genius, to
see it then in the late forties. The question was how to supply
the need; characteristically again, Miss Nightingale began with
herself. In 1851 she entered the Society of Sisters of Mercy, a
Protestant institution at Kaiserverth on the Rhine, for training
deaconesses or nursing sisters. Here she thoroughly qualified
herself as a nurse, and on her return to London she devoted much
time and money to the Governesses’ Sanatorium in Harley Street.
The autumn of 1854 saw the beginning of the enterprise for
which all this time she had been unconsciously preparing
herself. The country was being horrified by the tidings which
continually came home of the appalling mismanagement of the
military hospitals in the Crimea. Our gallant soldiers were
dying by hundreds for lack of the simplest and most elementary
nursing. It seemed, as religious people say, a clear “call”
to this country squire’s daughter, and that very evening she
wrote to Mr. Sidney Herbert (afterward Lord Herbert of Lea),
the Secretary at War, and sketched her plan. At the very same
time Mr. Herbert himself was writing to her to ask if she would
organize and take out a company of nurses and the two letters
crossed in the post. In October, 1854, Miss Nightingale started
for the East with thirty-eight nurses in her command, some of
whom were naturally nuns. The day after her arrival came the
wounded from Balaklava, quickly followed by six hundred wounded
from Inkerman and in a few months she had ten thousand poor
fellows under her care. She did much more than organize; she
would traverse at night, her little lamp in her hand, the four
miles of crowded hospital wards and Longfellow’s famous lines
are no poetic fiction, many a dying man turned to kiss her
shadow as it fell.
Miss Florence Nightingale was the first woman to receive the
Order of Merit, the coveted distinction formerly reserved
exclusively for men. She received the freedom of the City of
London in 1908 and was a Lady of Grace of the Order of St. John
of Jerusalem.--Belfast (Ireland) _Telegram_.
(1789)