Florence Nightingale.

  • Belt, Elmer, 1893-1980.
Date:
1945
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Florence Nightingale. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material is part of the Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection. The original may be consulted at University of California Libraries.

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    At The atoz7 of Florence Nightingale, tlie impact of bar personality upon ^ ^/^ the probleBs of nursing care In the England of her day, la an espeeiallj appro- j_, priate study in our ovn tine today. In the midst of this terrible destructire «?A^£ var ve are proud to knov that the arerage length of time from the moment in which a soldier is wounded to the time he is given first aid is fire minutes. The nunA^er of wounded sared from death is 97^ of those wounded who are not Icilled by the first impact of their wound. In the Crimean Var of England, France and Turkey against Russia, old pen- sioners sent out to nurse the sick and wounded were not of the sli^test use. The soldiers had to attend each other. So sufficient preparations had been made for the care of the wounded. There was not only lack of surgeons but there were no dressers, no trained nurses, not eren linen to make bandages. No preparations were made for the coBBDonest surgical operations. Men lay in barracks for weeks without receiving the services of a doctor. They were left to expire upon the field of battle. They died by the shiploads in being transferred on a four-day Journey from the battlefield to the nearest barracks; and the barracks to which they vere brought held five thousand wounded in a space platined for one thousand well men. The operating room was opposite the largest ward. Through the window came the shrieks of the unanesthatlsed sufferers and from out of the windows cane flying amputated aims and legs t^ich rotted where they lay, making an ever-increasing pile on the pavement, their stench scarcely greater than the stench of the barrack rooms themselves. The death rate of the unattended wounded on the field of battle was never computed. The death rate of the four days on shipboard from Balaklava, across the Black Saa to the straits of the Bosporus where Scutari lay was kOf> - four out of ten of those ^o had entered the transport from Balaklava near Sabastopol died on the way to the straits of the Bosporus. Of those who reached the barracks of Scutari, h2f) did not live to leave the hospital. Such was the care of Ji;ngland's wounded before Florence Nightingale.