Florence Nightingale

 By Bruce Shawkey


Found this interesting book on the Internet authored by Florence Nightingale (1820-1910). She set what she believed were "best practices for nurses to maintain proper hygiene at hospitals. Her book was based on experiences while nursing at a hospital during the Crimean War. Conditions were awful. Many soldiers died from infection after being treated from their war wounds. Here's just one excerpt from her book regarding slop pails. 

A slop-pail should never be brought into a sick room. It should be carried directly to the water-closet, emptied there, rinsed there, and brought back. There should always be water and a cock in every water-closet for rinsing. But even if there is not, you must carry water there to rinse with. I have actually seen, in the private sick room, the utensils emptied into the foot-pan, and put back unrinsed under the bed. I can hardly say which is most abominable, whether to do this or to rinse the utensil in the sick room.

Though she was a Brit, many of her standards for nurses that she wrote over 100 years ago (1859) are in place in one form or another here in hospitals across the United States. Here's what Wikipedia states about her:

Florence Nightingale was an English social reformer, statistician and the founder of modern nursing. Nightingale came to prominence while serving as a manager and trainer of nurses during the Crimean War, in which she organized care for wounded soldiers at Constantinople. She significantly reduced death rates by improving hygiene and living standards. Nightingale gave nursing a favorable reputation and became an icon of Victorian culture, especially in the persona of "The Lady with the Lamp" making rounds of wounded soldiers at night with the aid of an oil lamp.


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