Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
Florence Nightingale
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treated by an incompetent and ineffective medical establishment
and that the most basic supplies were not available for care.
The British public raised an outcry over the unsanitary
treatment of the soldiers and demanded that the situation be
drastically improved. Nightingale received a letter from
Secretary of War Sidney Herbert, asking her to organize a corps
of nurses to tend to the sick and fallen soldiers in the Crimea.
Nightingale rose to her calling. She quickly assembled a team of
34 nurses and sailed with them to the Crimea just a few days
later. Keep in mind female nurses weren’t to be hired at this
moment in time.
Although they had been warned of the horrid conditions there,
nothing could have prepared Nightingale and her nurses for what
they saw when they arrived at Scutari, the British base hospital
in Constantinople. The hospital sat on top of a large cesspool,
which contaminated the water and the hospital building itself.
Patients lay on in their own excrement on stretchers strewn
throughout the hallways. Rodents and bugs scurried past them.
The most basic supplies, such as bandages and soap, grew
increasingly scarce as the number of ill and wounded steadily
increased. Even water needed to be rationed. More soldiers were
dying from infectious diseases like typhoid and cholera than
from injuries incurred in battle.
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contributed to improving the quality of their hospital stay. She
instituted the creation of an “invalid’s kitchen” where
appealing food for patients with special dietary requirements
was cooked. She established a laundry so that patients would
have clean linens. She also instituted a classroom and a library
for patients’ intellectual stimulation and entertainment. Based
on her observations in Crimea, Nightingale wrote an 830-page
report analyzing her experience and proposing reforms for other
military hospitals operating under poor conditions. The book
would spark a total restructuring of the War Office’s
administrative department, including the establishment of a
Royal Commission for the Health of the Army in 1857.
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Young women aspired to be like her. Eager to follow her example,
even women from the wealthy upper classes started enrolling at
the training school. Thanks to Nightingale, nursing was no
longer frowned upon by the upper classes; it had, in fact, come
to be viewed as an honorable vocation.
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