Acting on this belief, we find Miss Nightingale, in addition to her work in improving the nursing in the army, arranging plans by which soldiers might remit money to their relatives, by forming an extempore money order office where, on four afternoons each month, she personally received money from soldiers and arranged for sending it to relatives in England. Soon the government took the hint which she thus gave them—and established money order offices at different points where the troops were stationed.
Along the same practical line was her effort to combat the drink habit by establishing a coffee house, the details of which she arranged. Her next practical step was the establishment of reading rooms and class rooms—which were fitted up with textbooks, copy books, prints, maps, games, etc., secured from personal friends in the home land. On her request, two schoolmasters were sent out from England to take charge of “the education of the army.”
Scarcely had she returned from the Crimea than she began her long campaign for better sanitary conditions in the army, wherever it might be called in the future. “We can do no more,” she said, “for those who have suffered and died in their country’s service; they need our help no longer; their spirits are with God who gave them. It remains for us to strive that their sufferings may not have been endured in vain—to endeavor so to learn from experience as to lessen such sufferings in future by forethought and wise management.”
“Notes on Hospitals”
Chapter III.
“It may seem a strange principle to enunciate,” wrote Miss Nightingale in 1863, “as the very first requirement in a hospital that it should do the sick no harm. It is quite necessary, nevertheless, to lay down such a principle, because the actual mortality in hospitals, especially in those of large crowded cities is very much higher than any calculation founded on the mortality of the same class of diseases among patients out of hospitals would lead us to expect.”
At the time Miss Nightingale returned from the Crimea, the death rate in hospitals was lamentably high, and it was but natural that she should turn her attention to remedying such conditions, or at least to call attention to them. In 1858 her book, “Notes on Hospitals,” was issued. A noted man in acknowledging receipt of a copy stated that it appeared to him to be the most valuable contribution to sanitary science in application to medical institutions, that he had ever seen. In this book we find her calling attention to overcrowding, lack of drainage under hospitals, to ventilation, to the necessity of having non-absorbent floors and walls, to the desirability of iron beds, hair mattresses, and glass or earthen ware cups, instead of tin—also to needed improvements in hospital kitchens and laundries, to the curative effects of light—all of which ideas are today regarded as essentials in hospitals, but which were then years in advance of general practice. It is easy to point out defects—not always so easy to produce practical plans for correcting them, but Miss Nightingale not only called attention to the defects but at the same time showed how to remedy them. In the second edition of the book she enumerated “Sixteen Sanitary Defects in the Construction of Hospital Wards”—accompanying each statement with definite plans for correcting the defect. The publication of this little book on hospitals brought to her numerous requests for consultation regarding the construction of new hospitals which were being planned and more than a dozen hospitals constructed, soon after that time, had the benefit of her advice and detailed consideration of the architect’s plans. The questions as to the desirability of pavilion construction and whether a hospital should be built in the midst of a well-populated section, and among the class of people it is expected to serve—or in a more distant location, where better light and air are to be had—which are still debated among hospital people, were then as hotly debated as now. It was not unusual to find her making out the main specifications for an entire hospital building regarding which her advice had been sought, and architects and sanitary engineers were very glad to be able to quote her approval of their plans. Sir Edward Cook, her biographer, states that “in its day, Miss Nightingale’s Notes on Hospitals revolutionized many ideas, and gave a new direction to hospital construction.”
“NOTES ON NURSING.”
Between the return of Miss Nightingale from the Crimea, and the starting of the first real training school for nurses some three or four years elapsed, which were largely devoted to the securing of better sanitary conditions for the army—and in tedious and exhaustive work with military officials and legislators, in addition to her work in improving hospital buildings and methods.