Florence Nightingale: “The dead lay beside the living”

reThe letter he received from the London Times editorial office in November 1854 from a colonel in the British Army had it all: “All the elements of annihilation are against us … The men return in convulsions to one crowded and torn by Storm”. Tent in the hospital, lie down in a smelly atmosphere that is enough to cause infection and die painfully there. “

Other articles confirmed the misery of Queen Victoria’s soldiers: “There is a shortage of association and nurses. Even clothing for the production of bandages for the wounded was not available. “The dead lay beside the living … Decency or cleanliness was ignored, the unpleasant and disgusting stench could escape through cracks in the walls and ceilings and poison the atmosphere.” This is how the well-known war correspondent William Howard Russell, the British Crimean War Front (1853-1856) described it.

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Readers of the Times were not only surprised by the incompetence with which the generals of the British Empire along with France and the Ottoman Empire went to war against Russia. Since the great powers quietly agreed that their rivalry over the spheres of influence in the Levant would not be waged in a major war, but would greatly limit the test of power to the Crimean peninsula, the expeditionary force of 26,000 men without tents and other existential equipment in the supposedly short drawn war.

It took tens of thousands of deaths to convince those involved that different rules were applied in the first war of the machine age. The trenches, the armored ships, the siege artillery gave an idea of ​​how industrialization changed the battlefields and what enormous logistics were needed to prevail over them. This included a medical team that could care for the wounded and sick. But “almost everything is missing from this hospital department, which was so poorly furnished from the start,” an eyewitness reported.

That also angered Florence Nightingale, 34. As the daughter of a wealthy family, she knew the wife of Secretary of War Sidney Herbert well and immediately presented him with an offer. She would move to Crimea with a group of women to care for the sick in the hospital. His example became not only a landmark in the medical field, but modern nursing in general. It is not for nothing that its 200th anniversary in 2020 is celebrated as “International Day of Care”. She was born on May 12, 1820.

The infirmary was not born in Florence Nightingale. Born on a European trip to Florence in Florence (hence her first name), she had learned languages, philosophy, history, and old and new mathematics. As a child, she accompanied her mother and a governess on visits to the sick. At 17, he campaigned for the sick for weeks during a flu epidemic. During this time, her desire to dedicate her life to nursing grew: “God spoke to me and called me to his ministry,” he wrote in his journal.

The parents were not very enthusiastic, since the infirmary was seen as a job for the lower classes. After all, her daughter was awarded an internship at the German Diakonie Kaiserswerther in 1851. There she learned hygiene, wound care, sick care, and operations assistance. More teaching stations became hospitals in and around Paris. In 1853, Florence Nightingale took over the unpaid management of a hospital for disabled women in London.

War Secretary Sidney Herbert accepted Nightingale’s offer and appointed him to head the nursing division of the English General Hospital in Turkey at the large military barracks in Scutari (Üsküdar) near Istanbul, where the British wounded were taken by ship (which many did not survive). In late 1854, he arrived in Scutari with 38 nurses, including some experienced nuns and, above all, younger women from ordinary settings who were used to working hard in oppressive living conditions.

Conditions were “bleak and dire,” according to an eyewitness. The sick and dying lay together on mattresses or blankets on the floor, the sanitary facilities consisted of wooden bathtubs in the hallways, and the heating did not work. “His clothes were dirty with dirt and intestinal secretions, gunpowder and mud, etc., they blackened his hands and faces, and his body was full of vermin,” said a doctor. 50 to 60 patients died every day.

Florence Nightingale soon groomed with her fellow sisters, though she persisted with the British military administration: Along with the nurses (whose existence is often overlooked), the sisters ensured cleanliness and hygiene, cleaned the floors, and changed the bedding. A sick kitchen and a laundry were built.

Surprisingly, the death toll on Scutari initially remained high. Finally, a commission sent from London discovered that the old Turkish Scutari barracks had been built on a cesspool, that the drainage pipes were leaking, and that manure was leaking into drinking water, writes British historian Orlando Figes.

After a 20-hour day with a lamp, the director often checked the beds again for injuries, earning him the name “The Lady with the Lamp.” Later she was also called “Angel of Scutari”. A donation fund from the “Times” gave him financial freedom. With their experiences in Scutari, the sisters also went to hospitals in Crimea.

She finally fell ill in the camp, and after the end of the Crimean War, she returned to England in 1856 and published numerous writings on her experiences. Around £ 50,000 was raised in a fundraiser aimed at thanking his Crimean mission. With this he founded the first school of nursing at St. Thomas Hospital in London, in which nurses were trained under medical supervision and according to scientific knowledge. Today a museum in London commemorates them.

Due to a febrile illness, the symptoms of which may have resembled CFS, Nightingale had been confined to bed since 1857. However, she wrote letters, spoke to politicians, and wrote books on how to run hospitals (“Notes on Hospitals” ). He also advocated new and modern nursing principles (“Notes on Nursing”).

Thanks to his ideas, better care and more protection against infection, there were better conditions for nurses in hospitals. Furthermore, their commitment contributed to the fact that nursing was considered a socially respected and recognized professional career for women. In 1907, she was the first woman to be admitted to the “Order of Merit” by King Edward VII. Florence Nightingale died in London on August 13, 1910. She was 90 years old.

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