Florence Nightingale

24:11Nightingale is still finding her feet when Scutari receives a flood of desperate new patients. On the 9th of November, 600 casualties from the Battle of Inkaman arrive. Over subsequent days, they are joined by many hundreds more. Soon, the corridors in Scutari are crammed with almost 2 ,000 patients, but approximately two dozen of them die each day. In fact, across that winter, more than 4 ,000 men in Nightingale's care don't make it. About 90 % of these deaths result from illnesses such as typhus and cholera. But throughout this bleakest of seasons, she does what she can for her soldiers. In an attempt to lessen fear and trauma, she erects screens around the poor men who are subjected to amputations.

25:02The saving grace is that chloroform is available, even though there isn't a single operating table in the hospital. The soldiers appreciate her efforts. In attending to their comfort and well-being, she offers them something they've never received before. She makes them feel cared for. Under Miss Nightingale's supervision, these men are human beings whose lives matter, instead of cannon fodder left to rot in a foreign field.

25:33Soon, news of Nightingale's impact extends beyond Scutari, with stories of her efforts finding their way into British newspapers and magazines. In February 1855, a famous illustration of her is published, in which she is shown walking from bed to bed in the dead of night, checking on each wounded soldier. She holds a so-called genie lamp to light her way. The flame acts as a metaphor, a glimmer of hope in these darkest of times. And even though the lantern she uses is, in reality, of a different design, the image sticks. A legend is born. Florence Nightingale will forevermore be the lady with the lamp.

26:16The lady with the lamp is first mentioned by a soldier in a letter honed to his family, and this gets sent off to one of the newspapers in London. The public become fascinated by this almost enigmatic woman who's gone out. They don't really know who she is. She just kind of appears. No one has seen her. The illustrators doing the illustrations for the newspapers, they're in London, so they don't really know what she actually looks like. So her real likeness doesn't get out for a long, long time. The mystery fuels her mythology. In Britain, Nightingale becomes a huge celebrity. Lines of unofficial merchandise are launched, and her first name sees a spike of popularity with baby girls named in her honor.

27:20resistant design prevents cracking and the clear base and sides make items easy to find even when the totes are stacked find select shelving and tote storage up to 15 off at the home depot to organize every room in your home from your garage to your attic visit homedepot.com how doers get more done chronic migraine 15 or more headache days a month each lasting four hours or more can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment.

27:58Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.

28:35Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. Back in Scutari, Nightingale has undoubtedly made her patients more comfortable and her hospital more organized. Yet mortality rates remain stubbornly high. A government commission is set up to investigate. What it finds is nightmarish. The sewer beneath the hospital building is horribly clogged. A dead horse is festering in the water supply, which is also contaminated by leaking latrines. The notion that such hazards could be the cause of disease is not straightforwardly obvious to Florence Nightingale.

29:19She, like so many others at this time, adheres to what's called the Miasma Theory, which holds that disease is caused by bad smells and dirty air. It has a fundamental impact on Nightingale's work at Scutare, in which she tries to rid the place of its rank odours. Her idea was wrong, but what she was doing was right So cleaning up and trying to get some fresh air in During Covid, we were told, you know, keep our windows open She was doing all of that, she was making sure that everyone was washing their hands So while she didn't have quite the right theory, she did do all of the right things

30:05However, as Nightingale doesn't subscribe to the novel theory of contagion, it leads her to overlook certain crucial factors, such as the risks of overcrowding and of disease being transmitted in water. It's only once these issues are addressed that the death rate at Scutari begins to fall, which it does rapidly in the spring of 1855.

30:30Nightingale's attention now turns to hospitals on the front line in Crimea, where British soldiers are also languishing. On the journey across the beautiful expanse of the Black Sea, she experiences the effects of her growing fame. Passengers crowd the decks of nearby boats to get a glimpse of the lady with the lamp, cheering and applauding as she sails past. She is conveyed around the war zone in a horse-drawn carriage, depictions of which soon fill newspapers in Britain and elsewhere. Joining her on this expedition is another lauded celebrity, Alexis Sawyer, a French chef and restaurateur who has built a gastronomic empire in London.

31:12Between them, they plan to transform the diets of ailing soldiers. But before they can set to work, disaster strikes. On the 12th of May, the day after Nightingale turns 35, she suddenly collapses. On one of her visits out to the Crimean Peninsula, she picked up what was then called Crimean fever. Today this is thought to be something called brucellosis, which is a bacterial infection picked up from infected meat and sometimes unpasteurized milk. So she obviously ate or drunk something out there that caused her to become very ill. There was a point where they actually thought she was going to die out there, and I think everyone was preparing for the worst.

31:59After several days, her condition improves. Begrudgingly, she returns to Scutari to convalesce. But even here, she refuses to rest. From her sickbed, Nightingale draws up plans to help improve the well-being of British soldiers, encouraging them away from drink and idleness. She helps to open a cafe for recuperating servicemen, organizes lectures and activities, and arranges for them to receive newspapers and books. She also uses her time to write to the families of soldiers in her care and those who have recently died.

32:37But the Nightingale touch is not appreciated by everyone. Her tussles with the men in charge of Scutari continue. There are also tensions among the nurses in her charge. Several are dismissed for ill discipline and incompetence. Others are reprimanded for falling short of Nightingale's notoriously high expectations. I think she was quite difficult to work under. She had very precise and exact ways of working and if someone wasn't up to her standards that's it they were they were on their way home. She did clash quite a lot with some of the nurses. A lot of them were absolutely devoted to her but we see that through nursing that you know there's all these kind of standards and procedures that you have to follow but a lot of them weren't used to having that strong leadership.

33:28After a year at Scutari, she is disappointed by the various obstacles she still faces. Christ was betrayed by one, she complains in one of her many writings. But my cause has been betrayed by everyone. Evidence, perhaps, of a certain inflexibility and a tendency to dramatize her own circumstances. Yet for all the difficulties, Nightingale has achieved her objectives of turning Scutari into a well-run hospital. By the war's end in early 1856, a year and a half after her arrival, its death rate is comparable to that of any hospital in one of England's big, industrialized cities. Florence Nightingale couldn't be held in higher esteem, with the public donating huge sums of money to support her work.

34:17Among the people, her reputation is almost that of a secular saint. As far as they're concerned, she is responsible for saving the lives of countless brave British soldiers. Despite the appalling casualty rate, the Crimean War turns out to be a sizable victory for British forces. By the summer of 1856, Nightingale is ready to return home. Yet she goes out of her way to avoid anything resembling a hero's welcome. Traveling to England incognito under the alias of Miss Smith, she makes it all the way to a railway station in Derbyshire without being recognized. Once she alights the train, she takes her bags and walks a mile and a half across the fields, turning up at her parents' house unannounced.

35:06Adjusting to life back home is testing. Over the last two and a half years, Nightingale has had life-changing experiences. She's witnessed horrifying trauma, been stricken with terrible illness, and of course, become a hugely celebrated public figure. Nightingale actually really didn't like the public perception of her and her fame. After the war, she basically goes into hiding for a good few years. At one point, the carriage she'd used during the war was brought back to the UK, and it was paraded around Southampton. and the carriage almost becomes a bit of a symbol of her and it's used in various different locations across the country.

35:47And I think she says something like, that Russian cart hangs around my neck. And she eventually gets one of her footmen to basically go and take it away and hide it away at one of her houses.

36:02But though she's now safely back in the quiet of her old family home, Nightingale cannot shake the traumatic experience of Scutari. She struggles to sleep, unable to escape the memories of the horrors she's witnessed. She has no appetite. At night, she feels anxious. During the days, she stares blankly out of the window. In a private note, she writes, Oh, my poor men who endure so patiently. I feel I have been such a bad mother to you. But soon, an invitation arrives that brightens her mood.

36:44It is the 21st of September, 1856, a damp autumn morning in the Scottish Highlands, where thanks to a recent deluge, the nearby River Dee has burst its banks. Deep in ancient woodland, a coach squelches its way along a narrow path, its wheels throwing up great globules of mud into the air. Inside the vehicle, Florence Nightingale sits pensively. She's en route to a very important meeting. Presently, the dense forest thins out, and a grand building comes into view like something from a fairy tale, a castle festooned with turrets and towers. But this is no medieval fortress. It's Balmoral, a newly built country bolt hole for none other than Queen Victoria and her husband, Prince Albert.

37:38During the war, the queen was captivated by reports of Nightingale's work. She even sent a gift of a beautiful red brooch in thanks for her service to the nation, along with a letter of support, which Nightingale shared with the soldiers at Scutari. Now Victoria is honoring Nightingale with a private audience. It's a rare privilege, and an opportunity to ask the monarch to back reform of medical care in the armed forces.

38:08At the castle entrance, Nightingale descends the coach. Although there is no grand welcoming committee, her arrival is marked by a solitary bagpiper, as is customary. Nightingale is shown into a drawing room like a parody of a highland hunting lodge. Everywhere there are thistles and antlers, and each available surface is swathed in tartan. Before long, Her Majesty appears at the door. Half a dozen little dogs skamper around her ankles as she comes in to greet her guest, who lowers herself into a deep curtsy. They settle on tartan-covered sofas, facing each other, the queen at a slight angle to accommodate the swell of her pregnant belly.

38:54But though Nightingale is here to advance her cause, the conversation is stilted. The two women are almost identical in age, yet they differ in so many ways. Victoria expecting her ninth child, the epitome of 19th century domesticity, the mother of a nation. Nightingale, a woman who has rejected convention in search of a different life. After a few minutes, Victoria's husband Albert strides into the room, and the atmosphere changes. He and Nightingale are peas in a pod, businesslike and serious. As tea is delivered, they discuss facts and figures, systems and procedures. Nightingale presses her case for a royal commission to examine the causes of deaths in the Crimean War.

39:42She also tells the Queen how dearly the soldiers at Scutari valued the words of support she sent them. Victoria is visibly moved by this. She prides herself on having a deep emotional connection with her people.

40:07While the Queen has no authority to launch the official investigation that Nightingale seeks, she pledges her support. It seems her influence is enough to tip the balance. Soon after Nightingale returns from Balmoral, the Royal Commission is up and running. It's now that the post-Crimea stage of Nightingale's career begins in earnest. With a£500 annual allowance from her father, she moves into a suite at the Burlington Hotel in London, which will be her HQ for the next several years. Her immediate concern is her own investigation into medical care in the armed forces, one intended to complement the Royal Commission.

40:50To this end, she teams up with eminent experts, including the statistician William Farr. And while Nightingale is no longer a working nurse, the legend of the lady with the lamp persists.

41:04In 1857, the American poet Henry Longfellow publishes a poem in the Atlantic magazine. It is a gushing peon to Nightingale the nurse, whom he describes as a noble type of good, heroic womanhood. But the poetic gloss of her public reputation obscures the woman beneath it, and the reality of her contribution to the world. I think one of the biggest misconceptions we have about her is actually thinking of her as a nurse. and I know a lot of people won't be too happy with that, a lot of nurses won't really like that, but her nursing career started in 1853 and was pretty much over by the end of 1856.

41:51Really, to me, she is a reformer, she's a statistician, she's a campaigner, and even when she was nursing, she was more in a management role. Superintendent was her title both at Harley Street and across the war. and yes, she was a nurse. I'm not denying who she was a nurse but she was so much more.

42:17Right now, get up to 15 % off Select Storage Solutions. Put heavy-duty HDX totes to good use protecting what's important to you. The solid, impact-resistant design prevents cracking and the clear base and sides make items easy to find even when the totes are stacked. Find select shelving and tote storage up to 15 % off at the Home Depot to organize every room in your home, from your garage to your attic. Visit HomeDepot.com. How doers get more done. Chronic migraine. 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox, onabotulinum toxin A, prevents headaches in adults with chronic migraine.

42:59It's not for those with 14 or fewer headache days a month. It's the number one prescribed branded chronic migraine preventive treatment. Prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Allerge your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems, or muscle weakness can be signs of a life-threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue, and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms, and dizziness.

43:28Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions, including ALS Lou Gehrig's disease, myasthenia gravis or Lambert-Eaton syndrome, and medications, including botulinum toxins, as these may increase the risk of serious side effects. Why wait? Ask your doctor, visit BotoxChronicMigraine.com, or call 1-800-44-BOTOX to learn more. In the summer of 1857, Nightingale's mother and sister come to stay with her at the Burlington Hotel. But the extreme absorption in her work concerns her mother, who takes her to task for laboring over her papers into the small hours.

44:02A few days later, Nightingale collapses.

44:08Doctors tell her it's frayed nerves. A modern perspective might suggest that it's another attack of brucellosis. For the next 11 years, Nightingale barely leaves home. She moves, if at all, from her bed to the sofa and back again, and endures frequent bouts of excruciating spinal pain. Inevitably, her suffering takes a toll on her. Family and friends report that she is querulous, irritable, and short-tempered.

44:41A rare upside of her condition is that it helps her to regulate the time she is able to give to others, including her family. This might help to explain how this lengthy period of ill health and seclusion is perhaps the most productive of Nightingale's life. A lot of the letters that we have in our collection are of her making appointments with people. She very much didn't want people to turn up at her house uninvited. She very strictly made appointments. She was very strong-willed, had her own way of doing things and knew what she wanted and where she wanted to get too. With the help of William Farr, Nightingale continues to dig into the facts surrounding military hospitals.

45:24The numbers that they uncover are astounding. Of the 18 ,000 British deaths in Crimea, 16 ,000 were due to illness, not injury. To her horror, Nightingale learns that the wards of Scutari were one of the most lethal theatres of the entire conflict. The conclusions are inescapable. It was the reduction in overcrowding, the flushing of the sewer, and the cleaning of the water supply that was the key to saving lives at Scutari, not the battery of changes the Nightingale nurses had implemented. Moreover, Nightingale learns that mortality rates for soldiers in army hospitals in Britain are also staggeringly high, and poor sanitation is the chief cause.

46:12The Royal Commission delivers its findings in February 1858 Around the same time, Nightingale sends the report she has been working on to 2 ,000 public figures It's a mammoth work Hundreds of pages of detailed analysis and extraordinary revelation And it's relayed in an arresting, utterly novel way This report was for MPs but she knew they weren't going to read 800 pages worth of just text. So she creates these diagrams. They're really easy ways to present the data without having to read all of the stuff around it. Her Coxcomb diagram, for example, is her most famous, and that shows the mortality rates at the British Army hospitals.

46:59And it's an early form of pie chart, and this diagram really shows that it was the disease that the soldiers were picking up in the hospital which was the biggest cause of death within the hospitals. In coming years, sweeping reform takes place within the military along the lines she suggests. Higher standards of hygiene and sanitation are introduced. An army medical school is founded to improve the quality of care. At home and abroad, the health of British soldiers is transformed.

47:36The compilation of her report is a personal turning point for Nightingale too, the beginning of the end for her adherence to the miasma theory. Some also speculate that the findings leave her with overwhelming guilt over the thousands of deaths she now realizes she might have prevented. What's certain is that from this time forth, Nightingale makes remarkable efforts to improve public health in numerous ways. In 1859, she publishes Notes on Hospitals. The book outlines her thoughts on hospital architecture and design, all dictated by the need for ventilation and spacing, the lack of which had proved so deadly at Scutari.

48:18The following year, another volume, Notes on Nursing, is an immediate bestseller, in which Nightingale distills the rudiments of nursing in the home. Around the same time, she launches the Florence Nightingale Training School, attached to St. Thomas' Hospital in London. All the while, as she works from the confines of her own home, she recognizes the unavoidable fact that without her exceptional privilege, none of this would have been possible. Indeed, the issue of poverty is often at the forefront of her

48:52work. Wealth inequalities in Victorian Britain are enormous. The infamous Poor Law of 1834 restricts financial aid to the poor, forcing many into workhouses. In these austere places, little better than prisons, paupers are given food and shelter in exchange for gruelling manual labour. Health in such settings is virtually non-existent. The workhouses that would have been set up across Britain would have had infirmaries attached to them, but there wouldn't have really been any proper medical provision for them. It was often up to the sort of most able-bodied women in the workhouse to look after people.

49:38They would never have trained as nurses, they would have literally just been women who have ended up in the workhouse. To address the problem, Nightingale works closely with a fellow reformer, William Rathbone. In 1864, they create the position of a nursing superintendent at a workhouse in Liverpool. It's the first such appointment anywhere in Britain. To modern ears, it might sound small. In the 1860s, it was a quietly radical step. They started to work on these formal staffing structures for the workhouse infirmaries because they felt the poor in society should have equal access to healthcare.

50:18This really changes the way people view the workhouse infirmaries. And although I can 100 % say it has that link to the NHS, I think it really does start off that idea of universal healthcare for all and ensuring that everyone has equal access to healthcare when they need it.

50:401887 is Jubilee year in Britain, the 50th anniversary of Victoria's ascension to the throne. At the start of her reign, expectations had not been high, but the teenage queen has grown up to become, in many communities at least, a beloved leader, the emblem of an era. Something similar can be said of Florence Nightingale, now 67 and living in Mayfair in London. Half a century has passed since she first heard the voice of God calling her to service. Famed not just for her work in health reforms, to the public, in many ways she is the embodiment of a Victorian feminine ideal, representing compassion, good works, cleanliness and godliness.

51:25To mark the Queen's special anniversary, an exhibition is held in London. Gathered together are a vast array of artefacts to display the successes of the Victorian era. A section is devoted to Nightingale, including the carriage that transported her around Crimea, an object that has acquired an almost mystical quality, more religious relic than mere memento.

51:53Much like her queen, Nightingale spends her later years largely hidden from public view. She also becomes passionately interested in India, though, again mirroring Victoria herself, She has never set foot there As a younger woman Nightingale had been interested In the welfare of British soldiers in India Now in her old age She becomes a public supporter For Indian self-governance reforms The final years of her life Are spent quietly in Mayfair Despite her prolonged health problems She lives until the age of 90 Passing away on the 13th of August 1910 In the years since her heyday she is cited as a key influence on all manner of initiatives.

52:38Henri Dunant credits Nightingale as his inspiration for founding the International Red Cross in the 1860s, as well as for his work that leads to the founding of the Geneva Convention. For much of the late 20th century, she is the only woman other than Elizabeth II to appear on British banknotes. When the COVID-19 pandemic hits the UK in 2020, the temporary hospitals built to care for those affected are named in her honor.

53:08The life of Florence Nightingale was one of courage, service, and devotion. But despite her privilege in a deeply unequal society, it was also marked by struggle, isolation, and regret. Over a century after her death, her story is as layered with legend and misconception as it was when she still personally tended the sick. But the core message of Nightingale's life burns as brightly as her lantern once did in those hellish Scutari hospital wards. Florence Nightingale's biggest legacy is really her reform work in terms of nursing, healthcare and hospitals. These really laid the foundations for modern healthcare today.

53:53Nightingale and her lamp became a symbol of hope for people in the Crimean War. And these people were stuck in an awful situation and they just needed someone who cared. And I think for me, human nature hasn't changed in the last 200 odd years. There are still people today who step outside their comfort zone to really try and help others and to make a difference.

54:27Next time on Short History Of, we'll bring you a short history of the Mitford sisters. When you think about that time in the 30s running up to the Second World War, I can't tell you how many people have said to me recently how relevant it seems to today. We've got a very, very disturbed world with a lot of voters across Europe swinging to the right. so I think there is a relevance in following their story. It's just interesting as well as grammars. That's next time.

55:19solutions. Put heavy-duty HDX totes to good use, protecting what's important to you. The solid, impact-resistant design prevents cracking, and the clear base and sides make items easy to find even when the totes are stacked. Find select shelving and tote storage up to 15 % off at the Home Depot to organize every room in your home, from your garage to your attic. Visit homedepot.com, how doers get more done. Hey, it's Ryan Reynolds here for Mint Mobile. Now, I was looking for fun ways to tell you that Mint's offer of unlimited premium wireless for$15 a month is back. So I thought it would be fun if we made$15 bills.

55:59But it turns out that's very illegal. So there goes my big idea for the commercial. Give it a try at mintmobile.com slash switch. Upfront payment of$45 for three months,$90 for six months, or$180 for 12-month plan required. $15 per month equivalent. Taxes and fees extra. Initial plan term only greater than 50 gigabytes may slow when network is busy. See terms.