Miss Nightingale's position was a most difficult one. Everything was in disorder, and every official was extremely jealous of interference. Miss Nightingale, however, at once impressed upon her staff the duty of obeying the doctors' orders, as she did herself. An invalids' kitchen was established immediately by her to supplement the rations. A laundry was added; the nursing itself, was, however, the most difficult and important part of the work.
But it would take far too much space to give all the details of that kind but strict administration which brought comparative comfort and a low death-rate into the Scutari hospitals. During a year and a half the labor of getting the hospitals into working order was enormous, but before the peace arrived they were models of what such institutions may be.
Speaking of Miss Nightingale in the hospital at Scutari, the Times correspondent wrote: "Wherever there is disease in its most dangerous form, and the hand of the spoiler distressingly nigh, there is that incomparable woman sure to be seen; her benignant presence is an influence of good comfort even amid the struggles of expiring nature. She is a ministering angel, without any exaggeration, in these hospitals, and as her slender form glides quietly along each corridor, every poor fellow's face softens with gratitude at the sight of her. When all the medical officers have retired for the night, and silence and darkness have settled down upon these miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed, alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds. With the heart of a true woman and the manner of a lady, accomplished and refined beyond most of her sex, she combines a surprising calmness of judgment and promptitude and decision of character. The popular instinct was not mistaken, which, when she set out from England on her mission of mercy, hailed her as a heroine; I trust that she may not earn her title to a higher, though sadder, appellation. No one who has observed her fragile figure and delicate health can avoid misgivings lest these should fail."
Public feeling bubbled up into poetry. Even doggerel ballads sung about the streets praised
"The Nightingale of the East,
For her heart it means good."
Among many others, Longfellow wrote the charming poem, "The Lady with the Lamp," so beautifully illustrated by the statuette of Florence Nightingale at St Thomas's Hospital, suggested by the well-known incident recorded in a soldier's letter: "She would speak to one and another, and nod and smile to many more; but she could not do it to all, you know, for we lay there by hundreds; but we could kiss her shadow as it fell, and lay our heads on our pillows again, content."
"Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom.
And flit from room to room.
"And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.
"On England's annals, through the long
Hereafter of her speech and song.
A light its rays shall cast
From portals of the past.
"A lady with a lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land.
A noble type of good
Heroic womanhood."