EVER REMEMBERED

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 79, Issue 110, 11 May 1936, Page 2

EVER REMEMBERED

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE 116th ANNIVERSARY TO-MORROW A name that will live in the memory of men and women throughout the world is that of Florence Nightingale, •‘The Lady with the Lamp.” To-mor-row, May 12, is the 116th anniversary of her birth. It is 26 years since she passed on from this world. Her heroism during the Crimean War is recorded in history. When a young girl she wished to take up nursing, but her parents were horrified at the idea and discouraged her in every way. When about 25 years c-f age she had finally decided what her mission in life would be. For some time she cherished her plan and finally approached her mother, who was again very averse to the thought of her daughter taking up such an awful profession. Later, with her parents’ consent, she spent seme months in Paris with the Sisters of Charity. Florence Nightingale, with a band of nurses, went to Turkey to minister to the sick and wounded of the British Army. No Englishman forgets h/r wonderful work there and how on the first day at Scutari she and her nurses were just in time to receive over 40'J wounded men from Inkerman. It was a place of disorder and chaos, which soon became one of order and cleanliness under her supervision. Lamp in hand, Florence Nightingale went through the long rows of beds, night after night tending to the wants of the wounded and ministering to them. She thought nothing of working 20 hours a day, on her feet most of the time, while in surgical cases she was on her knees seven to eight hours helpI ing the doctors with their work. She sought no reward. All she asked for were funds to train nurses and this was forthcoming, for the British people, realising the wonderful humanitarian work Florence Nightingale was doing raised the necessary funds to train nurses in the good work. When Florence Nightingale arrived in the Crimea with her 38 nurses and a staff, of three, all the space that was allotted to them for sleep and administration was equal to that of three medical officers and their servants, or equal to that occupied by the commandant of the hospital himself. All the building was infested with vermin, and open sewers were underneath the huge building. At one time there were 2400 patients in the wards and corridors of the barrack hospital. Until the nurses arrived the number of shirts washed daily during the previous month for ail these patients was six. She found that the commonest nccesities for decency as well as for comfort were lacking. Once she saw five soldiers set aside as hopeless cases. She aked for the cases herself, and, assited by one of her nurses, tended all that night, and they were all fit for surgical operations the next day. She used to supply the stationery and I postage stamps for those patients sufficiently convalescent to write, at her

1 own expense, as army regulations were - impossible barriers. 2 Through her heroism and amazing s work in th.e hospitals, filled with the s sick and wounded men from the Cri- :. mea, she worked herself to a standstill; - as an invalid confined to her room most t of the time, she did her real and last- - ing humanitarian work for 50 years p with brain power and judgment that astonished every leader. 1 King Edward in 1907 wrote to Florr ence Nightingale “with much pleasure c to offer the Order of Merit in recogni3 tion of invaluable services to the couni- try and to humanity.” She was the •r first woman to be so honoured.