The other day, my daughter-in-law wanted to know if Florence Nightingale was involved in treating wounded British soldiers during World War I. I said, "Yes", but soon realized, on checking with an encyclopedia, that I had given her a wrong answer.
Florence Nightingale (1820 - 1910) had a passion for Nursing at a time when nursing as a career had a poor reputation among women from upper class families. So her announcement in 1845 that she would enter nursing as a career brought much distress to her mother.
After receiving four months of training in Germany in 1851, and after working for a while, she took the post of Superintendent at the Institute for the care of Sick Gentlewomen in London. Three years later, in 1854, she took with her 38 women volunteer nurses to Turkey to nurse British soldiers injured in the Crimean War.
In Turkey, Nightingale was deeply saddened to see wounded British soldiers being badly cared for by over-worked medical staff. There was official indifference, and medicines were in short supply. Amid poor hygiene and mass infections, Nightingale and her sister nurses thoroughly cleaned the hospital and equipment, and reorganized nursing care. Choked sewers were flushed out and ventilation in the hospital was improved to reduce the death rate.
It was during this Crimean Campaign that newspapers began to call her "the Lady with the Lamp." "When all the medical officers have retired for the night, and silence and darkness have setttled down upon the prostrate sick, she may be observed alone with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds", said a report in The Times.
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