| The lady with the pen |
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| Written by Linda Hart, 2004 | |
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Page 1 of 2 The Crimean War in 1854 with its enormous death toll... a makeshift hospital with little medical equipment... a nurse visiting the wards at night to comfort the soldiers... founder of today's nursing profession... This was all I knew about Florence Nightingale (1820-1910). This year, the 150th anniversary of the Crimean War, seemed an appropriate time to learn more about a woman who is remembered and admired around the world. I intended to read a couple of biographies, to dig out some interesting aspects of Nightingale's life hidden behind the legendary stories of her work in the Crimea. But there were far more biographies than I ever imagined - 50 to be precise - and I was soon on a steep learning curve. I hadn't realised that Nightingale went to the Crimea, aged 34, after a 14-year struggle to break free from her family's expectations that she would marry, have children, pay social calls and attend balls. I had assumed that she'd been nursing all her life when asked by the Government to set up a hospital in the middle of a war zone, but she'd had only 18 months of experience. I didn't know that most of the soldiers at the Barrack Hospital at Scutari died from disease (due to overcrowding, lack of ventilation, appalling sanitary conditions and vile food) and not from wounds received in battle. And it was her superb administrative skills that worked miracles there rather than any nursing skills. Perhaps most surprising: after returning from nearly two years in the Crimea, Florence Nightingale never did any nursing again. Reading and writingInstead, during the next 40 years she worked prodigiously as a writer, campaigner, adviser, statistician, journalist, correspondent and backroom politician. She did this despite a recurring illness, thought today to be brucellosis, which meant she was bedridden much of the time. But from her couch, for the next four decades, she read and researched, she investigated and analysed, she asked questions and demanded answers.And she wrote books, pamphlets, memoranda, reports, essays and newspaper articles about housing, hygiene and medical care in the army; the design of hospitals and training of nurses; the causes of disease and poverty; district nursing and midwifery; social and economic conditions in India; mysticism and Eastern religion. The great and the good - from prime ministers down - often called on her for information or advice, and received encouragement or admonishment. It is said that no viceroy would leave for India without paying a call on Miss Nightingale first. Her work had priority over everything else. She refused to see members of her family except occasionally, by appointment, and one at a time. From her couch she wielded enormous power. To take just one example: she ensured that a Royal Commission was set up to examine sanitary conditions and mortality in the British army, and then played a key role by choosing the commission's members, drawing up its terms of reference, and writing 567 pages of evidence titled Notes Affecting the Health, Efficiency, and Hospital Administration of the British Army. She was determined that the conditions which led to so many deaths in the Crimean War would not happen again. Historians disagreeBut the more I read, the more I realised that for the past 30 years another war has been going on - over Florence Nightingale herself. It is not so much the facts of her life that are disputed - though there is some of that, and new information is always coming to light. No, it is her character that is in dispute. |
