The observations and advice of Miss Nightingale were continually laid before this Commission, and her name became almost as much a household word in the States as at home. She was regarded as the great friend of the American soldiers and the beneficent genius of their hospitals. Had Miss Nightingale been in a more robust state of health, there is little doubt that she would have visited America during this great crisis, to give personal help in the initial work of the establishment of army nursing.
About this period, also, the seed of her example bore fruit in the establishment of the Red Cross Society, the branches of which to-day cover the civilised world. The honour of the inception belongs to M. Henri Dunant, a citizen of Geneva, who, appalled by the fearful carnage and disease among the soldiery in the Italian campaign, succeeded in drawing together an International Congress at the city of Geneva on October 26th, 1863, to consider how a neutral body might be formed for the relief of the wounded in battle. The result of Henri Dunant’s grand scheme was the extension of the work begun by Florence Nightingale in the Crimea over the entire Continent of Europe by means of the Red Cross Societies, which act in close relationship with their respective Governments and in conjunction with the army.
The work thus begun spread rapidly when that most sanguinary struggle of modern times, the Franco-German War, broke out in 1870. During that period Miss Nightingale’s advice was repeatedly sought and she was specially appealed to by the German authorities when organising their medical and nursing corps.
CHAPTER XXII
WISDOM FROM THE QUEEN OF NURSES
Literary Activity—Notes on Hospitals—Notes on Nursing—Hints for the Amateur Nurse—Interest in the Army in India—Writings on Indian Reforms.
This noble ensample to his sheep he gaf,
That first he wroughte and afterward he taught.
Chaucer.
In the years succeeding her return from the Crimea Miss Nightingale, in addition to the important labours recorded in the foregoing chapter, was actively engaged with her pen. Her writings dealt with the subjects so near her heart of hospital reform, sick nursing and household sanitation. If the soldier needed hygienic reforms in barracks and camps, so did the great mass of the people in their own homes. Miss Nightingale’s interest in army reform did not absorb her attention to the neglect of civil matters.
Her writings are distinguished not only by expert and technical knowledge, but by much homely practical wisdom. There is nothing of the blue-stocking about Florence Nightingale. She puts aside formulas, and with tender human feeling, enlivened by witty epigram and racy humour, goes right to the heart of her subject, particularly in regard to the needs and management of the sick.