The Idaho Republican. [volume] (Blackfoot, Idaho) 1904-1932, 1921-05-09
THE IMPORTANCE
OF HOSPITALS

One hundred and one years ago
Florence Nightingale was born, and
with the development of her life
there came great Development of
the hospital idea and sanitation and
reduction of human suffering.
Florence Nightingale was born in
Florence, Italy, and in the course of
her activities as teacher and nurse
she became intensely interested in
hospitals, with the result that she
visited the best hospitals in the
world and learned all she could about
their management and the details of
the work. When she was thirty-six
years old she was the best informed
woman in the world on sanitation
and hospital management and the
Crimean war was then in full blast,
with men falling by the thousands
and very little provision for taking
care of the wounded. They were in
a country far removed from hospitals
and supplies, and only the rudest at
tentiOn could be- given to their muta-
lations. Florence Nightingale was
in London correcting some of the
abuses of the school system, or
rather the lack of a system, when re-
rorts of the terrible sufferings of the
soldiers were spread thru England,
and she organized company of
thirty-eight nurses with first aid and
hospital equipment and hurried them
to Crimea, arranging for continu-
Gus shipment of supplies to carry on
the work.
Here for the first time in history
there was organized efforts at giving
the wounded soldiers woman's nurs-
ing under sanitary conditions that
gave them chance to heal the
wounds instead of letting them tester
IN the old way, and go thru their
course as running sores.
The nights were the hardest for
the patients to bear, and Florence
directed the work, but spent the
night going from cot to cot with a
lamp, doing whatever the respective
cases seemed to need the most, and
her unselfish service thru the weeks
and months, seven days and nights
each week Of unrelenting toll with
only enough rest and sleep to keep
her from breaking down, inspired the
other nurses and to great extent,
the whole British army, to do their
best.
Florence Nightingale was an or
ganizer. She not only worked her.
self, but she organized work and
workers and found leaders to keep
the organization functioning while
she marshaled others into working
bodies. She organized to supply
reading matter to the soldiers-a
thing that had never been done be-
fore, and that raised the morale of
the army in a marked degree, be-
sides reducing their mental suffer
ings.
At the close of the Crimean war in
1856, her health was greatly i'm
paired by the strain Of the service,
but she was the best informed per-
son in the world on how to minister
to the wants of the sick and wounded
soldiers, and fund of quarter of a
million dollars was placed at her dis
posal for hospital in London. Then
followed the short war between Ger
many and Austria, that between Ger
many and Denmark, then the Civil
war in the United Ctates, another
Austrian war, the Franco-Prussian
war, the many wars in Africa, the
Spanish-American war, and in all
these calamities and in the cholera
scourges and other epidemics of the
world, the name of Florence Night
ingale and her Red Cross society,
representing as it did, the angel Of
mercy in all lands, grew in power un-
til it could command the resources
of kings and kingdoms, of nations
and their citizens.
Florence Nightingale died in the
year 1910, but she left behind her a
kingdom organized to render service
in almost any quarter Of the earth
in the time that takes to deliver an
order or cablegram. Did an earth
quake put cities or provinces in help