FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
The Red Cross Nurse has become a heroic figure in the world to-day and
has saved lives by hundreds of thousands in every quarter of the globe;
she has labored under fire on the battlefield and in the reek of
pestilence in the rear; her form is as familiar in war as that of the
soldier, and her name betokens every charity and kindness--but of all
the heroic women who ever bore their healing art into the dark places
and black hours of history, no name stands out with the luster of
Florence Nightingale.
She was born in 1822 in the city of Florence in Italy, and was named
after the place where she first drew breath. Her father was William
Nightingale, an English gentleman, and her elder sister, Parthenope,
also took her name from the place where she was born, for Parthenope is
the ancient term for Naples.
The Nightingale family did not remain long in Italy, and soon after the
birth of his youngest child William Nightingale, with his wife and two
little daughters, returned to England where the two girls spent their
childhood in a rambling old house in Derbyshire with many traditions
and stories attached to it. Here Florence conceived a love for nursing
and used to tend sick animals in the neighborhood and when she grew
older, to sit up with and cheer the sick among the cottagers. There
were not many people, even among those who were far older than herself,
who could minister to the sick with her kindness and skill, and her
fame soon was general through the neighborhood. Poor men used to come
hat in hand to the old house requesting that Miss Florence spend a few
hours with a sick wife or a young mother, and the Nightingales were
kind enough and sensible enough to allow their daughter to do the work
for which she had so evident an inclination.
There were no trained nurses in those days, and the general business of
nursing as a profession was considered almost disreputable. Sick people
were expected to be cared for by their relatives; hospitals were
inefficient and badly run, and the comforts of the modern sickroom were
unknown. As Florence grew older she thought a great deal about these
things, and finally decided that she would do something which at that
time was regarded almost as strange as if she had declared her
intention of visiting the North Pole--she said she was going to become
a professional trained nurse, and went abroad to study nursing on the
Continent which was far ahead of England in such matters.
In a European hospital that was more in accord with the standards we
know to-day and where comfort, skill and cleanliness went hand in hand,
Florence Nightingale nursed the sick and acquired a mastery of the
profession as it was then understood. It was so unusual for a woman of
refinement to enter such a calling that she had become known in many
places simply because she had decided to become a nurse; and after she
returned to England she was at once offered the position of
Superintendent at a Home for Sick Governesses in London.
This home, like many another benevolent institution in those times, was
badly administered. As it constantly showed a deficit, its friends had
become discouraged in supporting it, and the subscriptions on which it
lived had been falling off. The ladies who were compelled to remain
there did not receive the care that they should have had, and were
unhappy and dispirited. This was the state of affairs when Florence
Nightingale became the Superintendent of the Home.
In a very short time the Home was completely changed. Miss Nightingale
had personally visited the former subscribers, and secured once more
their help and patronage. She had changed the system on which the Home
had been run to such an extent that it served as a model for
institutions of its kind, and where the unfortunate women that lived
there had been on the verge of actual physical suffering, they were now
well cared for and contented.
Then war broke out between England, France and Turkey on the one side
and Russia on the other,--a war that was brought about among other
reasons by the desire of the Russian Czar to seize and hold the port of
Constantinople. Great Britain and France supported the Turks and active
fighting commenced. The theater of war soon shifted to the Crimean
Peninsula where the British and French laid siege to the town of
Sebastopol which was Russia's most important fortress and chief base of
supplies. Before the walls of Sebastopol there took place severe
fighting, which continued until bitter winter rendered further
campaigning impossible.
While the war was going on thousands of sick and wounded British
soldiers were pouring into the base hospitals at Scutari, where no
provision for their care had been made. With the constant flood of
wounded men, and men who were dying of dysentery and cholera, with no
medical supplies and little food, with no nurses and only a few
doctors, the condition of the British wounded soon became terrible
beyond description. As there were no field dressing stations they had
to be carried for days with their wounds undressed before they reached
the hospital, and when they arrived it was often some time before the
harassed doctors could care for them. They were brought in with their
uniforms covered with filth and blood, and were laid in long rows on
the floors of the hospital where few cots were to be found. Vermin
crawled over the floors, over the walls and over the bodies of the
helpless men. Rats gnawed the fingers of the wounded who were too weak
to drive them away. There were no conveniences of any kind and many men
died of exhaustion because no food adequate for the sick could be
prepared. All the food, we are told, consisted of beef and vegetables
boiled together in one huge caldron, into which new supplies were
thrown indiscriminately as fast as they were delivered. The bread was
moldy and the beef too tough even for well men to eat.
Owing to the efforts of a war correspondent of the London _Times_, the
people at home were soon informed of the state of affairs in the
Crimea, and gifts and supplies poured in profusely. But owing to the
inefficiency and red tape of the War Department, the supplies were not
delivered, but lay rotting in warehouses and in the holds of vessels
while men died for the want of them. On one occasion, we are told, a
consignment of shoes for the soldiers turned out to be in women's
sizes. Improper inspections resulted in high profits, for the army
contractors made uniforms out of shoddy and leather accouterments from
paper, filled the cores of hay bales with kale stocks and cheated the
Government right and left without forbearance or conscience.
Then the newspapers began calling for English women to go to the Crimea
and care for the sick, and Florence Nightingale heard the call. She
wrote a letter to Sydney Herbert who was Minister of War, volunteering
to organize a body of nurses and go out to the Crimea to care for the
wounded.
Right then a curious thing happened. The War Department had already
decided that Miss Nightingale was the one person who could take charge
of the reorganization of the hospitals in the Crimea, and had written a
letter requesting her services. Offer and request crossed each other in
the mails. On the following day her appointment was officially
announced, and she was overwhelmed with proffers of assistance from all
sides.
A large number of patriotic women volunteered to aid her, but only a
very few possessed the necessary qualifications for such a task. Of all
that offered to go Miss Nightingale was only able to accept thirty that
she considered would be capable of performing the severe tasks that lay
ahead, for she knew only too well the grim welcome she would receive at
the Crimea.
Without farewells, quietly and at night, seen off only by a few
intimate relatives, the little group of nurses started on their
mission--the first one where women were to care for the soldiers who
had fallen in war.
They crossed the English Channel and arrived at Boulogne in France on
the following morning, where they were given a rousing greeting by the
voluble French fish-wives, who had heard of their mission and who
crowded around them to get a sight of the angels of mercy. From there
they made their way to the seat of the war, and Miss Nightingale looked
for the first time on the hospital where she was so soon to acquire
immortal fame.
It may well be thought that her heart sank when she saw the enormity of
the task that lay before her, for she had been sent to bring order from
chaos, plenty from want, comfort from torture and cleanliness from
wholesale filth. She had to contend not only with these awful
conditions, but with the dislike and distrust of the medical officers
with whom she was to work, who resented the fact that a woman had been
sent out to reorganize what they considered a part of their department,
and who doubted, because she was a woman, that she would be capable of
doing so efficiently.
And when she arrived there was no time to spend in preliminary
planning, for active fighting had been going on at the front and the
wounded from recent battles were pouring in, adding to the confusion
that already existed. They were laid groaning in hallways and on the
bare ground until such time as the doctors could look after them.
Then Florence Nightingale, hardly taking breath, plunged into the task
that awaited her and sent her nurses to the quarters where they were
most needed. With their own hands these brave Englishwomen scrubbed the
reeking floors and supervised the work of the orderlies. They visited
the quartermasters and obtained the supplies that had been tied up
through faulty administration and through army red tape, and in a short
time they had established a diet kitchen where several hundred sick and
wounded men could have the food they required, food that would save
their lives.
The death rate, we are told, before this woman nurse and her little
company arrived at the hospital was sixty percent of all the cases that
were treated there--and after she had effected the changes that she saw
were necessary, the death rate was only one percent--a fact in itself
that speaks more loudly than any words for her efficiency and her
bravery.
At times this indomitable woman was on her feet for twenty hours out of
the twenty-four, supervising, directing, taking the last message of
some dying soldier for his family, feeding another who was too weak to
feed himself. The doctors who had been her opponents soon looked up to
her and became her devoted friends, and the men who had been through
such terrible sufferings thought she was indeed an angel from heaven,
and, as she passed down the long wards would furtively kiss her shadow
as it fell across their blankets. Many a time she took charge of cases
that had been given up by the doctors, who turned their attention
always to those whom they believed had a fighting chance for life, and
she nursed them back to life with a patience and a tenderness that the
doctors could not spare.
From the ships and warehouses there commenced to appear the comforts
that sick men demanded--sheets and nightgowns, socks and pillows; in
the place of the nauseous beef stew, the wounded began to get broths
and jellies. Should they die they were sure of a woman's hand and a
kindly ministration at the last, for Florence Nightingale had resolved
that no man should die unattended in her hospital. And the wonders she
performed were heard of back in England, where her name became
national.
She had gone to Scutari in 1854. In May, 1855, she visited other
hospitals that were nearer the seat of war and went into the trenches
themselves before Sebastopol. One of her biographers tells us that when
she entered the trenches she was warned by a sentinel to go no further,
because the enemy had the place under close watch and would certainly
open fire when they beheld a group of people at that particular point.
"My good young man," replied Miss Nightingale, "more dead and wounded
have passed through my hands than I hope you will ever see on the
battlefield during the whole of your military career; believe me, I
have no fear of death."
Then she fell ill with Crimean fever, and through the army the news was
received with more consternation than a severe defeat. Men broke down
and cried like children when they heard that Miss Nightingale lay at
the point of death, and the Commander in Chief, Lord Raglan, rode
through sleet and mud for hours to visit her personally. She did not
die, however, but recovered to take up again her duties as chief nurse
and organizer.
When the war was ended Miss Nightingale remained at the Crimea until
the last soldiers were sent home, and then, and not till then, she
followed them. After most of the men had left and only a few remained
she still worked faithfully to serve them, establishing "reading huts"
and places of recreation such as the Red Cross and the Y.M.C.A.
established in France and Belgium in the course of the World War some
sixty years later.
As a matter of fact the work performed by Miss Nightingale was
indirectly responsible for the birth of the Red Cross which was
organized in Switzerland some four years after she had finished her
work at the Crimea, and certainly no name in the Red Cross, in spite of
the host of noble men and women who have served there, has ever equaled
the glory of her own.
She returned to England quietly as she had left, although a British
Government placed a battleship at her service--and she lived in England
engaged in useful and philanthropic work for a great many years. With a
fund of about $250,000 she founded the Nightingale Home for the proper
training of nurses, a fund that she could have doubled or trebled had
she so desired, or if the needs of the home had required it. In the
following years she was frequently consulted on hospital organization
in the armies not only of Great Britain but of Continental nations as
well. She died in 1910, one of the great figures among the heroines of
history.