FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

Dominion, Volume 3, Issue 896, 16 August 1910, Page 11

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

AN APPRECIATION. Yesterday the news was flashed across tho world that Florence Nightingale, the heroic woman who has been enshrined in the hearts of the British nation for so many years, was dead, and surely it is safo to say that not a man, not a woman, to whom her name is familiar did not pause in their work or their pleasuro and think for an instant in the midst of their regret that the world is indeed losing far 100 rapidly its heroic figures. One by one they have slowly faded from our knowledge, if not our sight, poet, author, painter, statesman, our greatest King, and now Florence Nightingale, the greatest philanthropic woman thi, world has evor seen, full of years and honours; hns also gone to her rest. No words can add to tho lustre of her name. It will shine undimined soj long as hospital work endures. In an age when women were weak, feeble creatures, with no mind, no Initiative of their own, creatures that were tied in by the iron bands of a most rigid code of conventions, the- big ■ soul of Florence Nightingale refiised to bo made prisoner by them, and madp its way into a world and a department of work that hitherto had been run by men, and most inefficiently at that. The story of her. work in, the Eastern hospitals reads like a romance. The unflinching services, the combination of sacrifice with higli powers of organisation, the energy that restored order out of "chaos and preserved so many soldiers' lives, were altogether unique. Day Before Inkerman, * At Scutari, which she reached on Noveniber 4, ; :1854, with her band of thirty-eight trained rfursos, the day before tho battle of Inkerman, the biggest problem that could face anyone awaited her. The wounded poured into the hospital by the shipload until there were four miles of beds not eighteen inches apart, filled with men as they came from the battlefield; some with .wounds undressed nnd clothes stiffened with gore, others sick with fever and cholera. The hospital, wsj, , chaos. The commissariat had broken down, and there was neither proper food, nor change of clothing, neither medical comforts, nor hospital accessories. ■ • lUow Miss Nightingale changed all this and extended her superintendence to the other hospitals in the East is a matter of history. ■ It was a gigantic task, and brought tho traits of her strong personality into bold relief. Her ono caro was tho soldier. For him she defied the constituted authorities, and slashed through red-tape,, often:, with'a force that./upset somebody. In! her letters home to the War Office she painted things' in their true, though s.ppalling, colours, and sho was the only person on the spot who, being free of official considerations, dared to do this. . • .■ ■ "The Lady of the Lamp." ■ ;The Hon. Captain Baillie, M.L.C., has some very interesting things to tell of the rough-and-ready way in which military : nursing was conducted in the days when the "Lady of the Lamp" had not yet organised matters. He was then a captain in the 24th Foot, and was commanded by Lord Ifardinge to take command of the , military hospital at Chichester, containing six hundred beds. The medical' staff, consisted of a deputy inspector-general, , four staff-sergeants, and fifteen assistant sergeants. A wire would come telling him to prepare beds for;one ,'iundred wounded arriving that day, and no one but those who have- ever been through it can have tho faintest realisation of what hospital work was in those times. They simply lived in the midst of horrors and unimaginable suffering. .'When the work, of Florence Nightingale was over, she returned to England to. do that. pioneer work whioh, though, not so famous as : ~her-: Crimean-.:task, has results by which-we.benefit to-day, and which will last to aU. time—that is, the creating of the nursing profession, with its' branches,:that touch all sections-of the nation—the hospital nurse for the sick poor in hospital, the district nurse for the hick poor in thoir homes, the private nurse for all of us, from Royalty downwards, in our times of illness, and the military nurse who cares for our soldiers in peace, and is so efficient and prepared that no disaster like .that of tho Crimea can occur again. Work in England. J?or work like tending tho sick, which , requires : knowledge, skill, sympathy, ■ tack, and delicacy, Miss Nightingale had long realised ,the two essentials, a refined, type of woman and a'thorough and systematic training. The fund of ,£50,000 subscribed by her admirers gave her the opportunity, and she devoted it to training and maintaining nurses at St. Thomas's Hospital. This was tho first step.: When she had shown tho way, others followed, but it is noteworthy that for many, .many years she, on her sick couch, was the guidin" spirit of all nursing movements. Gradually the "Nightingale nurses" were appointed _to other hospitals where they organised' training schools, and so came the hospital and private nurses of to-day, many thousands in number. After the Nightingale training school came the Liverpool school for district nurses, which she founded in conjunction with Mr. William Rathbouo. From ' this sprang '■ the district nursing which is now found all over Great Britain, and is consolidated into a great branch of work, chiefly directed by Queen Victoria's Jubilee Institute for, Nurses. , Next came the appointment of Miss Agnes Jones, a Nightingale nurse, to the great Brownlow Hill Infirmary at Liverpool, and so began humane and efficient nursing of' our sick paupers. All this tiruo Miss Nightingale had been quietly working in conjuction with her friend, Lord Herbert of Leo, head of tho War Office, to. institute a system of military nursing. Barracks and military hospitals were inspected and rearranged on moi-e sanitary lines, and, little by little, lest- the military authorities sjiould protest against an "invasion of women, a few trained nurses were appointed to the chief military hospitals. Thus was tho great barrier broken down, and when the late Boer war showed the need for a real corps of trained nurses, the War Office yielded to tho influence first brought to bear by Miss Nightingale and appointed a Matron-in-Chief, with matrons''and over 400 nurses under her. • ■ In recognition of the work done by this remarkable woman in the cause of suffering humanity, his Majesty King Edward in November conferred upon her the Order of Merit,, this'being the first occasion upon which tho honour had fallen to a.woman. And in February, 1909, the citizens of London, to show their appreciation of her life task, presented her with tho freedom of the city.\ • Perhaps to no. other woman has it been given to see the work.she started grow with such success and to such proportions.