FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

Taranaki Daily News, 11 May 1935, Page 10

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

ANNIVERSARY OF BIRTH PROFOUND NURSING KNOWLEDGE. WORK IN THE CRIMEAN WAR. The anniversary of the birth of Florence Nightingale, who became the famous f “Lady with the Lamp” of the Crimean' War, falls to-morrow. Florence Nightingale was born of English parents at Florence, Italy, on May 12, 1820, and she lived to be 90 years of age, dying in 1910. She was the pioneer of trained army nursing. Always keen to take up the nursing profession, which in her day was looked on with disdain, she went through a course of training at the Protestant Deaconesses’ Institute at Kaiserworth in Germany, and subsequently studied French methods at Paris. Returning to England, she reformed the management of the sanatorium for governesses in Harley Street, London, and when the reports of the suffering of the troops in the Crimea reached England in October, 1854, she set sail for Scutari to improve the deplorable conditions at the military hospital there. She toiled unceasingly until the British troops left the town in July, 1856, but the strenuous work had permanently undermined her health, and although she lived for another 54 years she was'compelled to take life very carefully. Her nightly rounds of the hospital wards and her kindness and sympathy was the cause of the troops calling her “the Lady with the Lamp.” The feeling of the British nation foupd expression in a gift of £50,000, with which Miss (Nightingale founded the training home for nurses which bears her name. Her knowledge of hospital management was so profound that medical men and Governments from all over Europe sought her advice. She reported on the Army Medical Corps and its work in the Crimea, and in 1907 she received the Order of Merit, and the Honorary Freedom of the City of London in 1908. The Red Cross Society really owed its beginning to the feeling of sympathy awakened throughout Europe by the sufferings of the wounded in tthe Crimean War and in the Austrian-Italian wars, especially at the battle of Solferino in 1859. The general rules were drafted by an international conference which met at Geneva in 1863. The British societies were voluntary and the Continental partly so. .The insignia was chosen by Henry Dumont, Geneva, the founder of the movement. The red 1 cross on white ground is the reverse of the Swiss flag, which is a white cross on red ground. Dumont chose this design as a mark of respect to his own country, where nearly all the negotiations were carried on. During wartime the insignia must be accompanied by the flag of the country using it, replaced for the individual by an armlet. ;