When the Crimean war broke out in 1854, it can easily be imagined
that there was no woman in England so well fitted to take charge of
the chaotic situation which soon developed in regard to the care of
the wounded. The employment of women nurses in the army was an entire
innovation. It excited jealousy in medical men, and strong criticism
from military officers. In spite of the fact that the idea was
certain to be branded as unwomanly by her own sex, and by the world
in general, she offered her services, and her letter crossed in the
mails a formal offer from Sir Sidney Herbert of the War Department
of the position of director of a party of women nurses who were to
be sent to nurse the sick. From France, a devoted company of Sisters
of Charity had gone, who were rendering excellent service to the
wounded, and it was felt by some officials who were not bound hand
and foot by routine and precedent, that a company of women nurses
from England might be sent to assist in the emergency that had
arisen. Her services at this time are well known. The main facts were
tersely summed up in the following paragraphs, published at the time
of her death:
“The death rate at Scutari was 42 per cent. In one hospital
it rose to 56. Eighty per cent of those whose limbs were
amputated died of gangrene. The sick list amounted to over
13,000. In the Turkish barracks on the Bosphorus there
were two miles of sick beds, in a double file along the
corridors. The rats ran over the wounds of the helpless
patients.
“Miss Nightingale assembled a party of 41 volunteer nurses,
including ten Catholic nuns and eight sisters of mercy of
the Anglican church, and took them to the Crimea. Upon her
arrival at Scutari the “Lady of the Lamp” went straightway
to work to bring order out of confusion, life out of the
jaws of death, heaven on earth from a veritable hell. The
day after her arrival they brought in the wounded survivors
of the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaklava; the next
day came the wounded from the bloody field of Inkerman.
‘Red tape’ insisted that all stores should be inspected
ere being issued to the troops. When she found that the
inspection would take three days Miss Nightingale broke
down the doors and commandeered the supplies. She had
soon reduced the death rate from 42 to 2 per cent. The
wounded and the dying followed her with their eyes in her
progress from cot to cot, as though she were an angel
visitant. When, at the close of the war, a dinner was
given the military and naval officers, those present voted
for the one whose services would longest be remembered
by posterity. There was but one name on every slip of
paper--that of Florence Nightingale.
“She went back to England under an assumed name, and
reached her home before it was known that she had left
Turkey. The queen sent for her and thanked her in person at
Balmoral. Every soldier in the army contributed a day’s pay
to a fund of $250,000 for their benefactor, but she gave it
all to found the Florence Nightingale Training School for
Nurses in London. The Geneva convention and the Red Cross
Society were the eventual outcome of her labors in the
east.”
The difficulties which she had to contend with can never be fully
appreciated at this time when women’s service as nurses in the army
in most civilized countries is well established. Her biographer
writing of that period says:
“Miss Nightingale’s work in the Crimea was attended by
ceaseless worry. She had to fight her way into full
authority. She knew that she would win, but her enemies
were active, and were for the moment in possession of the
field. ‘There is not an official,’ she said, ‘who would
not burn me like Joan of Arc, if he could, but they know
that the War Office cannot turn me out because the country
is with me. * * * The real grievance against us is that
though subordinate to the medical chiefs in office, we are
superior to them in influence, and in the chance of being
heard at home.’”
It is not easy to suggest the many qualities of character in Miss
Nightingale which the experiences in the Crimea brought out into bold
relief--qualities which are just as much needed in nursing today as
they were then. Her unflinching endurance of the hardships which the
conditions forced upon her; her generous recognition of the work of
others; her thoughtful care of the nurses who had been entrusted to
her, under the most difficult conditions--should be remembered quite
as much as her wonderful organizing qualities, her keen insight into
situations, and her general ability to produce results--to bring
things to pass. It was a recognition of these latter qualities that
led Queen Victoria to exclaim: “Such a clear head! I wish we had her
at the War Office.”
After the war was over and a general inquiry as to conditions and
methods of sanitary improvement in regard to the army had been
started in London, an army doctor writing of her said: “It may
surprise many persons to find from Miss Nightingale’s evidence that,
added to feminine graces, she possesses not only the gift of acute
perception, but that on all the points submitted to her she reasons
with a strong, acute, most logical, and if we may say so, _masculine
intellect_, that may well shame other witnesses. They maunder through
their subject, as if they had by no means made up their minds on
any one point--they would, and they would not; and they seem almost
to think that two parallel roads may sometimes be made to meet,
by dint of courtesy and good feeling, amiable motives that should
never be trusted to in matters of duty. When you have to encounter
hydra-headed monsters of officialism and ineptitude, straight hitting
is the best mode of attack. Miss Nightingale shows that she not only
knows her subject, but feels it thoroughly. There is, in all she
says, a clearness, a logical coherence, a pungency and abruptness, a
ring as of true metal, that is altogether admirable.”
To have failed in appreciation of the part her assistant nurses
played, during the excitement of wartime conditions, would have been
easy and, to a degree, excusable--but she did not fail. To take the
whole credit for achievement to oneself is a very human failing, but
it was not one of Florence Nightingale’s failings.
One illustration of her appreciation of her associates in the
campaign shows this characteristic plainly. Of one woman whom she had
placed in a position of more than ordinary responsibility, she wrote:
“Without her, our Crimean work would have come to grief--without her
judgment, her devotion, her unselfish, consistent looking to the
one great end--the carrying out of the work as a whole--without her
untiring zeal, her accuracy in all trusts and accounts, her truth,
her faithfulness. Her praise and reward are in higher hands than
mine.”
In describing to the Secretary of State certain sanitary reforms
which she carried out in the hospitals of Scutari, she wrote: “I must
pay my tribute to the instinctive delicacy, the ready attention of
orderlies and patients during all that dreadful period. For my sake
they performed offices of this kind (which they neither would for the
sake of discipline, nor for that of importance to their own health,
which they did not know), and never was there one word nor one look
which a gentleman would not have used; and while paying this humble
tribute to humble courtesy, the tears come into my eyes as I think
how amidst scenes of loathsome disease and death, there rose above it
all the innate dignity, gentleness, and chivalry of the men, shining
in the midst of what must be considered the lowest sinks of human
misery, and preventing, instinctively, the use of one expression
which could distress a gentlewoman.”
It is easy to think of Miss Nightingale as a great organizer and
executive--it is less easy to imagine how she found time to give
the personal attention to the individual patient that she did give.
“She was wonderful,” said one, “at cheering up any one who was a bit
low.” In the midst of her manifold responsibilities she found time
to write hundreds of letters, to relatives at home, for those unable
to write, and to instill in the nurses associated with her the same
spirit. There was nothing mechanical in the nursing of that period.
Every patient was a human being with relatives and anxious friends
rightfully interested, who must be kept informed as to his condition,
as far as possible.
TEACHING A COUNTRY BY DEMONSTRATION.
Nowadays when women of many classes are contending that legislation
is necessary before real reforms can be brought about, it is
interesting to note that Florence Nightingale’s reforms were
initiated mainly by demonstration of the way a thing could be
accomplished. Her biographer, in writing of this, says that “it was
a common belief of the time that it was in the nature of the British
soldier to be drunken. The same idea was entertained of the British
nurse. Miss Nightingale utterly refused to believe it.” Writing to
a friend, while in Scutari, she remarks: “I have never been able
to join in the popular cry about the recklessness, sensuality and
helplessness of the soldiers. On the contrary, I should say that
I have never seen so teachable and helpful a class as the army
generally. Give them opportunity, promptly and securely, to send
money home and they will use it. Give them schools and lectures and
they will come to them. Give them books and games and amusements and
they will leave off drinking. Give them suffering and they will bear
it. Give them work to do and they will do it.”
Acting on this belief, we find Miss Nightingale, in addition to
her work in improving the nursing in the army, arranging plans by
which soldiers might remit money to their relatives, by forming an
extempore money order office where, on four afternoons each month,
she personally received money from soldiers and arranged for sending
it to relatives in England. Soon the government took the hint which
she thus gave them--and established money order offices at different
points where the troops were stationed.
Along the same practical line was her effort to combat the drink
habit by establishing a coffee house, the details of which she
arranged. Her next practical step was the establishment of reading
rooms and class rooms--which were fitted up with textbooks, copy
books, prints, maps, games, etc., secured from personal friends in
the home land. On her request, two schoolmasters were sent out from
England to take charge of “the education of the army.”
Scarcely had she returned from the Crimea than she began her long
campaign for better sanitary conditions in the army, wherever it
might be called in the future. “We can do no more,” she said, “for
those who have suffered and died in their country’s service; they
need our help no longer; their spirits are with God who gave them.
It remains for us to strive that their sufferings may not have been
endured in vain--to endeavor so to learn from experience as to lessen
such sufferings in future by forethought and wise management.”
[Illustration]
“Notes on Hospitals”