I do not think I have used too strong a word of the gift she was preparing. For the writer of an article which appeared in Nursing Notes[5] was right when, at the end of Miss Nightingale’s life, she wrote of her:—
“Miss Nightingale belongs to that band of the great ones of the earth who may be acclaimed as citizens of the world; her influence has extended far beyond the limits of the nation to which she owed her birth, and in a very special sense she will be the great prototype for all time to those who follow more especially in her footsteps, in the profession she practically created. We must ever be grateful for the shining example she has given to nurses, who in her find united that broad-minded comprehension of the ultimate aim of all their work, with a patient and untiring devotion to its practical detail, which alone combine to make the perfect nurse.”
But as yet she was only humbly and diligently preparing herself for the vocation to which she had determined, in face of countless obstacles, to devote herself, little knowing how vast would be the opportunities given to her when once she was ready for the work.
During the winter and spring of 1849-50 she made a long tour through Egypt with Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge. On her way there she met in Paris two Sisters of the Order of St. Vincent de Paul, from whom she took introductions to the schools and “miséricorde” in Alexandria. There she saw the fruits of long and self-denying discipline among the Nursing Sisters, and in the following year she visited Pastor Fliedner’s Institute at Kaiserswerth, where, among Protestant deaconesses, the life of ordered simplicity and service showed some of the same virtues.
Miss Nightingale’s first visit to Kaiserswerth was comparatively short, but in the following year, 1852, she went there again and took four months of definite training, from June to October.
A deep and warm regard seems to have arisen between the Fliedners and their English pupil, and the pastor’s friendship for Miss Nightingale’s revered counsellor, Elizabeth Fry, must have been one pleasant link in the happy bond.
Fliedner was certainly a wonderful man, and Miss Nightingale’s comment on the spirit of his work was as true as it was witty. “Pastor Fliedner,” she said, “began his work with two beds under a roof, not with a castle in the air, and Kaiserswerth is now diffusing its blessings and its deaconesses over almost every Protestant land.” This was literally true. Within ten years of founding Kaiserswerth he had established sixty nurses in twenty-five different centres. Later he founded a Mother-house on Mount Zion at Jerusalem, having already settled some of his nurses at Pittsburg in the United States. The building for the Jerusalem Mother-house was given by the King of Prussia, and, nursing all sick people, without any question of creed, is a school of training for nurses in the East.
Alexandria, Beyrout, Smyrna, Bucharest—he visited them all, and it is due to his efforts nearer home that to-day in almost all German towns of any importance there is a Deaconess Home, sending out trained women to nurse in middle-class families at very moderate fees, and ready to nurse the poor without any charge at all.
When, in 1864, “he passed to his glorious rest”—the words are Miss Nightingale’s—there were already one hundred such houses, and during part of Miss Nightingale’s visit to Kaiserswerth, Pastor Fliedner was away a good deal on the missionary journeys which spread the Deaconess Homes through Germany, but they met quite often enough for each to appreciate the noble character of the other. In all his different kinds of work for helping the poor she was eagerly interested, and it may be that some of her wise criticisms of district visiting in later years may have been suggested by the courtesy and good manners that ruled the visiting of poor homes at Kaiserswerth in which she shared. It was there also that she made warm friendship with Henrietta Frickenhaus, in whose training college at Kaiserswerth 400 pupils had already passed muster. It should be added that Henrietta Frickenhaus was the first schoolmistress of Kaiserswerth.