Letter from Miss Florence Nightingale.
Or in a widely different field, in that fight against one of the most important causes of consumption, in which she was so far ahead of her time, what could be more clear and convincing, both in knowledge and in reasoning, than the following analysis with regard to army barracks:—
“The cavalry barracks, as a whole, are the least overcrowded, and have the freest external movement of air. Next come the infantry; and the most crowded and the least ventilated externally are the Guards’ barracks; so that the mortality from consumption, which follows the same order of increase in the different arms, augments with increase of crowding and difficulty of ventilation.”[18]
Her own well-trained mind was in extreme contrast with the type of mind which she describes in the following story:—
“I remember, when a child, hearing the story of an accident, related by some one who sent two girls to fetch a ‘bottle of sal volatile from her room.’ ‘Mary could not stir,’ she said; ‘Fanny ran and fetched a bottle that was not sal volatile, and that was not in my room.’”
All her teaching, so far as I know it, is clearly at first-hand and carefully sifted. It is as far as possible from that useless kind of doctrine which is a mere echo of unthinking hearsay. For instance, how many sufferers she must have saved from unnecessary irritation by the following reminder to nurses:—
“Of all parts of the body, the face is perhaps the one which tells the least to the common observer or the casual visitor.
“I have known patients dying of sheer pain, exhaustion, and want of sleep, from one of the most lingering and painful diseases known, preserve, till within a few days of death, not only the healthy colour of the cheek, but the mottled appearance of a robust child. And scores of times have I heard these unfortunate creatures assailed with, ‘I am glad to see you looking so well.’ ‘I see no reason why you should not live till ninety years of age.’ ‘Why don’t you take a little more exercise and amusement?’—with all the other commonplaces with which we are so familiar.”