Florence Nightingale Warning: You are not logged in. Your IP address will be publicly visible if you make any edits. If you log in or create an account, your edits will be attributed to your username, along with other benefits.Anti-spam check. Do not fill this in! == Crimean War == [[File:Notes on Nursing (28).jpg|thumb|A print of the jewel awarded to Nightingale by [[Queen Victoria]], for her services to the soldiers in the war]] Florence Nightingale's most famous contribution came during the [[Crimean War]], which became her central focus when reports got back to Britain about the horrific conditions for the wounded at the military hospital on the Asiatic side of the [[Bosporus]], opposite [[Constantinople]], at Scutari (modern-day [[Üsküdar]] in [[Istanbul]]). Britain and France entered the war against Russia on the side of the [[Ottoman Empire]]. On 21 October 1854, she and the staff of 38 women volunteer nurses including her head nurse [[Eliza Roberts (British nurse)|Eliza Roberts]] and her aunt Mai Smith,<ref>{{cite journal | last1 = Gill | first1 = Christopher J. | title =Nightingale in Scutari: Her Legacy Reexamined | journal =Clinical Infectious Diseases | volume =40 | issue =12 | pages =1799–1805 | date=June 2005 | doi =10.1086/430380| pmid = 15909269 | last2 = Gill | first2 = Gillian C. | issn = 1058-4838 | doi-access =free }}</ref> and 15 Catholic nuns (mobilised by [[Henry Edward Manning]])<ref>{{cite book |author=Mary Jo Weaver |title=New Catholic Women: a Contemporary Challenge to Traditional Religious Authority |location=San Francisco |publisher=Harper and Row |year=1985 |page=31}} citing {{cite book |first=Olga|last=Hartley |title=Women and the Catholic Church |location=London |publisher=Buns, Oates & Washbourne |year=1935 |pages=222–223}}</ref> were sent (under the authorisation of Sidney Herbert) to the [[Ottoman Empire]]. On the way, Nightingale was assisted in Paris by her friend [[Mary Elizabeth Mohl|Mary Clarke]].<ref>Patrick Waddington (January 2007) [first published 2004]. [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/18880 "Mohl, Mary Elizabeth (1793–1883)"]. ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'' (online ed.). Oxford University Press. Accessed 7 February 2015.</ref> The volunteer nurses worked about {{convert|295|nmi|km mi|lk=in}} away from the main British camp across the [[Black Sea]] at [[Balaklava]], in the [[Crimea]]. [[File:Nightingale letter.jpeg|thumb|left|Letter from Nightingale to [[Mary Elizabeth Mohl|Mary Mohl]], 1881]] Nightingale arrived at [[Selimiye Barracks]] in Scutari early in November 1854. Her team found that poor care for wounded soldiers was being delivered by overworked medical staff in the face of official indifference. Medicines were in short supply, [[hygiene]] was being neglected, and mass infections were common, many of them fatal. There was no equipment to process food for the patients: {{quote|text=This frail young woman ... embraced in her solicitude the sick of three armies.|author=[[Lucien Baudens]]|source=''La guerre de Crimée, les campements, les abris, les ambulances, les hôpitaux'', p. 104.<ref>{{cite book |last=Baudens |first=Lucien |title=La Guerre de Crimée. Les campements, les bris, iles ambulances, les hôpitaux, etc. |year=1858 |publisher=Michel Lévy frères |location=Paris, France |via=Google Books |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=O81EAAAAcAAJ |language=fr |access-date=28 August 2017 |archive-date=10 March 2021 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20210310020012/https://books.google.com/books?id=O81EAAAAcAAJ |url-status=live }}</ref>}} After Nightingale sent a plea to ''[[The Times]]'' for a government solution to the poor condition of the facilities, the British Government commissioned [[Isambard Kingdom Brunel]] to design a [[prefabricated building|prefabricated]] hospital that could be built in England and shipped to the [[Dardanelles]]. The result was [[Renkioi Hospital]], a civilian facility that, under the management of [[Edmund Alexander Parkes]], had a death rate less than one tenth of that of Scutari.<ref>[http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/battles/crimea/popup/medical.htm "Report on Medical Care"]. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120202150422/http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/battles/crimea/popup/medical.htm |date=2 February 2012 }}. United Kingdom: The National Archives (WO 33/1 ff.119, 124, 146–7). 23 February 1855.</ref> [[Stephen Paget]] in the ''[[Dictionary of National Biography]]'' asserted that Nightingale reduced the death rate from 42% to 2%, either by making improvements in hygiene herself, or by calling for the Sanitary Commission.<ref>{{cite DNB12 |wstitle= Nightingale, Florence |volume=3}}</ref> For example, Nightingale implemented [[handwashing]] in the hospital where she worked.<ref>{{cite web |title = History |date=19 March 2015 |publisher=The Global Handwashing Partnership |url = http://globalhandwashing.org/about-handwashing/history-of-handwashing/ |access-date = 18 April 2015 |archive-date = 18 April 2015 |archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20150418020430/http://globalhandwashing.org/about-handwashing/history-of-handwashing/ |url-status = live }}</ref> [[File:Coloured mezzotint; Florence Nightingale, Wellcome L0019661.jpg|thumb|upright|Florence Nightingale, ''an angel of mercy''. [[Üsküdar|Scutari]] hospital, 1855]] During her first winter at Scutari, 4,077 soldiers died there. Ten times more soldiers died from illnesses such as [[typhus]], [[typhoid]], [[cholera]], and [[dysentery]] than from battle wounds. With overcrowding, defective [[sanitary sewer|sewers]] and lack of ventilation, the Sanitary Commission had to be sent out by the British government to Scutari in March 1855, almost six months after Nightingale had arrived. The commission flushed out the sewers and improved ventilation.<ref>{{cite book |title=Florence Nightingale: Measuring Hospital Care Outcomes |year=1999 |isbn=978-0-86688-559-1 |author=Nightingale, Florence |publisher=Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations }}</ref> Death rates were sharply reduced, but she never claimed credit for helping to reduce the death rate.<ref name=Constable1998>{{cite book |url=http://www.florence-nightingale-avenging-angel.co.uk/?p=861 |title=Florence Nightingale, Avenging Angel |first=Hugh |last=Small |publisher=Constable |year=1998 |page=861 |access-date=18 August 2014 |archive-date=27 October 2014 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141027112458/http://www.florence-nightingale-avenging-angel.co.uk/?p=861 |url-status=live }}</ref><ref name="Florence Nightingale to Her Nurses (1914)">{{cite book |title=Florence Nightingale to Her Nurses: A Selection From Miss Nightingale's Addresses to Probationers and Nurses of the Nightingale School at St Thomas's Hospital |last=Nightingale |first=Florence |place=London |publisher=Macmillan |year=1914}}</ref> Head Nurse [[Eliza Roberts (British nurse)|Eliza Roberts]] nursed Nightingale through her critical illness of May 1855.<ref>McDonald, Lynn, ed. ''Florence Nightingale: The Crimean War in Collected Works''. vol. xiv, 2010, pp. 65, 384 & 1038</ref> In 2001 and 2008 the BBC released documentaries that were critical of Nightingale's performance in the Crimean War, as were some follow-up articles published in ''The Guardian'' and the ''Sunday Times''. Nightingale scholar [[Lynn McDonald]] has dismissed these criticisms as "often preposterous", arguing they are not supported by the primary sources.<ref name="NightingaleCrimeanColectedWorkds"/> Nightingale still believed that the death rates were due to poor nutrition, lack of supplies, stale air, and overworking of the soldiers.<!-- not consistent with her belief in the Miasma theory of disease stated earlier ??? check --> After she returned to Britain and began collecting evidence before the Royal Commission on the Health of the Army, she came to believe that most of the soldiers at the hospital were killed by poor living conditions. This experience influenced her later career when she advocated sanitary living conditions as of great importance. Consequently, she reduced peacetime deaths in the army and turned her attention to the sanitary design of hospitals and the introduction of sanitation in working-class homes (see [[Florence Nightingale#Statistics and sanitary reform|Statistics and Sanitary Reform]]).<ref name="Small 2017">{{cite book |last1=Small |first1=Hugh |title=Florence Nightingale and Her Real Legacy |year=2017 |publisher=Robinson |location=London |pages=171–179}}</ref> [[File:Nightingale receiving the Wounded at Scutari by Jerry BarrettFXD.jpg|left|thumb|''The Mission of Mercy: Florence Nightingale receiving the Wounded at Scutari'' ([[Jerry Barrett]], 1857)]] According to some secondary sources, Nightingale had a frosty relationship with her fellow nurse [[Mary Seacole]], who ran a hotel/hospital for officers. Seacole's own memoir, ''Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands'', records only one, friendly, meeting with her, when she asked her for a bed for the night and got it; Seacole was in Scutari en route to the Crimea to join her business partner and start their business. However, Seacole pointed out that when she tried to join Nightingale's group, one of Nightingale's colleagues rebuffed her, and Seacole inferred that racism was at the root of that rebuttal.<ref>Mary Seacole, ''Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands'', Chapter VIII (London: James Blackwood, 1857), pp. 73–81</ref> Nightingale told her brother-in-law, in a private letter, that she was worried about contact between her work and Seacole's business, claiming that while "she was very kind to the men and, what is more, to the Officers – and did some good (she) made many drunk".<ref>letter 4 August 1870, Wellcome Ms 9004/59).</ref> Nightingale reportedly wrote, "I had the greatest difficulty in repelling Mrs. Seacole's advances, and in preventing association between her and my nurses (absolutely out of the question!) ... Anyone who employs Mrs. Seacole will introduce much kindness – also much drunkenness and improper conduct".<ref>Tan-Feng Chang (2017). ''Creolizing the White Woman's Burden: Mary Seacole Playing "Mother" at the Colonial Crossroads Between Panama and Crimea''. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 526.{{ISBN?}}</ref> On the other hand, Seacole told the French chef [[Alexis Soyer]] that "You must know, M Soyer, that Miss Nightingale is very fond of me. When I passed through Scutari, she very kindly gave me board and lodging."<ref>Soyer, p. 434.</ref> The arrival of two waves of Irish nuns, the [[Sisters of Mercy]], to assist with nursing duties at Scutari met with different responses from Nightingale. [[Mary Clare Moore]] headed the first wave and placed herself and her Sisters under the authority of Nightingale. The two were to remain friends for the rest of their lives.<ref>{{cite web |title=Irish Nurses at the Crimean War |url=https://www.carefulnursing.ie/go/background/irish_nurses_at_the_crimean_war |website=Careful Nursing: Philosophy & Professional Practice Model |access-date=8 March 2020 |language=en |archive-date=24 March 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200324210954/https://www.carefulnursing.ie/go/background/irish_nurses_at_the_crimean_war |url-status=live }}</ref> The second wave, headed by [[Mary Francis Bridgeman]] met with a cooler reception as Bridgeman refused to give up her authority over her Sisters to Nightingale while at the same time not trusting Nightingale, whom she regarded as ambitious.<ref>Bridgeman, M. F. (1854–1856). "An Account of the Mission of the Sisters of Mercy in the Military Hospitals of the East, Beginning December 1854 and Ending May 1856". Unpublished manuscript, Archives of the Sisters of Mercy, Dublin, p. 18</ref><ref name=Beyond>Carol Helmstadter (2019). [https://books.google.com/books?id=X3C9DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT134 ''Beyond Nightingale: Nursing on the Crimean War Battlefields'']. {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200731170152/https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=X3C9DwAAQBAJ&pg=PT134&lpg=PT134&dq |date=31 July 2020 }}. Manchester University Press.</ref> === The Lady with the Lamp === [[File:Florence Nightingale. Coloured lithograph. Wellcome V0006579.jpg|thumb|''[[Miss Nightingale at Scutari (1854)|The Lady with the Lamp]]''. Popular lithograph reproduction of a painting of Nightingale by [[Henrietta Rae]], 1891.]] During the Crimean War, Nightingale gained the nickname "The Lady with the Lamp" from a phrase in a report in ''[[The Times]]'': {{quote|text=She is a "ministering angel" without any exaggeration in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night and silence and darkness have settled down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.|author=William Russell|title=|source=Cited in Cook, E. T. (1913). ''The Life of Florence Nightingale''. Vol. 1, p. 237.}} The phrase was further popularised by [[Henry Wadsworth Longfellow]]'s 1857 poem "Santa Filomena":<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/nov1857/filomena.htm |date=November 1857 |title=Santa Filomena |first=Henry Wadsworth |last=Longfellow |pages=22–23 |work=The Atlantic Monthly |access-date=13 March 2010 |archive-date=14 May 2008 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20080514235021/http://www.theatlantic.com/unbound/poetry/nov1857/filomena.htm |url-status=live }}</ref> {{poemquote|Lo! in that house of misery A lady with a lamp I see Pass through the glimmering gloom, And flit from room to room.}} Nightingale was nicknamed "the lady with the hammer" by the troops after using a hammer to break into locked storage to access medicine to treat the wounded. However, Russell thought the behaviour was unladylike, and invented an alternative, leading to "The Lady with the Lamp".<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.virago.co.uk/virago-news/2020/04/23/rebel-women-florence-nightingale/ |title=Rebel Women, Florence Nightingale |last=Miles |first=Rosalind |date=23 April 2020 |website=[[Hachette UK]] |publisher=[[Little, Brown Book Group]] |access-date=19 March 2024 |via=[[Virago Press]]}}</ref><ref> {{cite journal |last1=Martini |first1=Mariano |last2=Lippi |first2=Donatella |date=15 September 2021 |title=SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) and the Teaching of Ignaz Semmelweis and Florence Nightingale: a Lesson of Public Health from History, after the "Introduction of Handwashing" (1847) |url=https://www.jpmh.org/index.php/jpmh/article/view/2161/908 |journal=Journal of Preventive Medicine and Hygiene |volume=62 |issue=3 |pages=621–624 |doi=10.15167/2421-4248/jpmh2021.62.3.2161 |access-date=March 19, 2024}}</ref> Summary: Please note that all contributions to Christianpedia may be edited, altered, or removed by other contributors. 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