THE LADY WITH THE LAMP.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 7329, 15 February 1902, Page 3

THE LADY WITH THE LAMP.

'■"'Florence Nightingale Wearing tiro ' : ' End of Life'o Journey. ■ In St Thomas's Hospital, London, there ] stands the statue of a woman -which is al- '• ways proudly pointed out to the visitor. , She wears the dress of a nurse, and carries : in her hantL> a (nurse's night lamp. The J 'figure is tall and slender, not to say fragile ; I tihd face is delicate and refined', with a look of reserve ' upon it-^-a "veiled! and silent t woman'' she has 'been called.' The living J face, however, would kindle -with' a strange i lununousness in conversation, and the dark i and- steady eyes gloijr with, what a keen ] 'oKserver "has . described' as" a "Star-like j brightness." - It is of the original of this statue that Longfellow has written: j "The wounded from the battle plain J Tn dreary Hospitals of pain, ' < The cheerless corridors, ... ( The cold and stony floors. "Lo! in^ that l^ouse.of misery ' ' i A lady with a lamp. I see • Pasß"thrpugh the glimmering gloom ] And flit irom room, to room. "And slow as in a dream of : bliss ' i The' speeohlesa sufferer turns to kisa . Her shadow as it falls ' „. -liOpon the darkening walls.'/ >;n. : ■'.-. I •From the tragedy of the Crimean war ' this figure emerges with a nimbus of glory. , ' One is. that of the great Russian engineer, Todleben, with powerful brow and face of _ . iron sternness; the other is this slender, ' modest English lady, with downcast eyes and pensive brow. It is Florence Nightingale, whose womanly- hand added so gracious an element to the memory of those sad days. And of the two, who. will doubt that the "angel of the hospital" has won the more enduring fame? Even after so many years have passed < it is difficult for us to read without being 3 overcome by a flood of mingled wrath and < "pity the story of the thousands of brave } 'miS'who died unattended ' in the hospitals '< at Scutari, or perished miserably of cold ' and starvation in the trenches about Sebas- < topol, while medicines and medical appli- * ances lay wasted on the beach at Varna, - and food in abundance was rotting in the < holds of vessels in Balaclava Harbour. ' There, were 13,000 sick in the hospitals. The death rate ran as high as 52 per cent; fouD out of every five patients who underwent amputation died of hospital gangrene ' amidst filth that would have disgraced a ; tribe of savages. Such< was the story that stirred every -woman's heart in the three '■ kingdoms as with a trumpet note, and Miss ; Florence Nightingale was asked to organise ' a .nursing service in the great hospital at i Scutari. . ! Florence Nightingale was the daughter of a. wealthy 'English household, 'but bor-n ; In Florence, Itoly^ from which city she de- ■ rived her name. ~ That she was a woman < of. fine intellect, clear judgment, and -heroic ( will cannot be doubted. Dean Stanley, indeed, has' called her "a woman of commanding genius." Most certainly she ■ proved herself in the Crimea to have great powers of administration. But «U her genius ran in womanly channels, especially ' in that of nursing. Every woman, she ; said, has, sooner, or later, some other hu- ] man life dependent upon' her skill as a 1 nurse; and nursing, she insisted, was an • art, one of the finest of all arts. ' Florence Nightingale has always prac- < tised what she preached. Born in tne 1 ease and luxury of a rich, woman's life, she « yet (turned aside, and spent ten years studying nursing as an art, first at the great ] Moravian Hospital at Kaisei-werth, next J with the Sisters of St Vincent de Paul, in , Paris. Then she organised a home for sick governesses in London. Then came the 1 opportunity of her life in the call to the East. ! On Oct. 27, 1854, she sailed for Scutari : with a 'band of thirty-eight nurses, of whom [ ten were Roman Catholic sisters of mercy : and fourteen members of the Anglican sis- ' terhood. She had ft keen ndr-ror of parade. • and started' with her gallant band without public notice of any kind', arriving at i Scutari on Nov. 5, the very day of a great : "What a colossal task lay before these nientle heroines! The hospital had 2300 ' patients, and the wards were rank with : fever and. cholera and the odour of undressed wounds. To this army of the sick and J dvin* were added in a few hours thewound- ' ed from Inkerman, bringing the number ttp to 5000. Into this vast den of pain and j foulness moved the delicate form of the ■ " lady with the lamp." Instantly a new in- , telligence, instinct with pity, fertile with ; womanly invention, swept through the hos- ( pital. I)irt became a crime, and fresh air and clean linen and sweet, pure food be- . came the order of tihe day. It was a strange passion of half-worshippmg loyalty that J this woman aroused in everyone about her ; . she established a sort of quiet despotism before which all, even, the highest officials, , bowed their heads. ] She toiled unceasingly all day, and when , all the medical officers had retired for the •

night and silence and darkness had settled down over the miles of prostrate sick, she was always seen alone with a little lamp in her hand making her solitary rounds It was this picture that Longfellow had in mind : As if a door in heaven should be opened, and then closed suddenly, The vision came and went, The light shone and was spent On England's annals through' ahe long hereafter of her speech and song That light its rays shall east From portals of the past. A lady with a lamp shall stand in the great history of the land, A noble type of good, Heroic womanhood. Florence Nightingale remained in the Crimea till the last British soldier had left its shores, then stole back to England as quietly as she had left it. Within ten years the Red Cross Society. was organised, whose emblem now gleams on every battlefield ; it owes its beginning to her. She still lives, a white-haired invalid, more than eighty years old, but recently reports haye repeatedly circulated of her serious illness. There is no doubt that tihis noblest of lives is fast approaching its end.