Florence Nightengale Essay

Florence Nightingale was one of the most influential woman figures in British history. Florence Nightingale was born on May 12, 1820, at the Villa Colombia in Florence, Italy and died peacefully in her sleep on August 13, 1910. She is buried in the graveyard at St. Margaret Church in East Wellow, Hampshire. She was an upper-class girl from Florence, Italy who had dreams of becoming a nurse, but her family strongly opposed the idea. In 1844 she decided to enter the field of nursing and improved hospitals sanitation exponentially. Nightingale had a strong will and stark determination which helped her to become a great nurse.

Soldiers were not the only ones who were in danger of being wounded or killed. Nurses experienced all the dangers of war as if they were on the actual battlefield.

These military hospitals were prone for infectious diseases that was detrimental to their health. Soldiers would come off the battlefield with “measles, smallpox, typhoid, and malaria” the list goes on. It was easy for nurse to contract these disease because the military hospital were so overcrowded and had poor ventilation. Military nurses did not let that stop them from taking care of soldiers. Women would work all hours of the night making sure the wounded and ill soldiers had the best care. It was their duty to see after the soldiers and they were proud of

In an article by Maev Kennedy, “ Florence Nightingale attest that she became a national hero after dramatically reducing the mortality rate at the Scutari hospital during the Crimean war...Official records show that by February 1855, the mortality rate had fallen from 60% to 42.7% and then, once a fresh water supply was introduced, it dropped further to 2.2%.” The death rate had changed from better conditions for sanitation and soldier's hygiene. I think the main reason why Florence Nightingale had become such a sizeable hero is because she thought of options on how to heal soldiers more effectively.According to Henry Wellcome, a pharmaceutical entrepreneur, “"The army is in splendid health, only seven deaths in a week and one of them a fit of apoplexy from drunkenness.” Thus, the death rate had dropped dramatically. The British Army had started to maintain healthy soldiers and prevent diseases.From the evidence here it shows how much of a big improvement the Uk had. The evidence also shows how War journalists improved conditions for soldiers, by showing the situations wounded soldiers were

To begin, Florence Blanchfield was a hard worker that went to multiple colleges before training to be an Army nurse. Florence Blanchfield joined the Army in 1917,(“Col. Florence Blanchfield, 87; Ex-Head of Nurse Corps. Dies”) that's when Florence was best known for being the very first woman to get regular commission in the Army. Also she concerned herself with nurses getting permission to get married while still in the army.(Biography.com Editors)

During the time of the great war many people were getting injured and even dying in great numbers. That being said, the room in the hospitals was rapidly decreasing. Generally there was anywhere from soldiers within one room. Each room reeked of human flesh decomposing or bile. The medical personnel of the time would take an initial look at patients and decided to save the ones who actually had a chance at going home to their families. When deceased soldiers were brought to the hospital people tried to identify the ones they could and when that was done the dead bodies were burned in a big hole. However, this changed when people such as Florence Nightingale came into the picture and began working for change in the hospitals. Because of her

“Medical care was heavily criticized in the press throughout the war. It was stated that surgery was often done without anesthesia, many unnecessary amputations were done, and that care was not state of the art for the times.” (Riley) Newspapers would spread slander and rumors of what happened on the battlefields, and people believed the often untrue accusations of unfair treatment throughout military hospitals, choosing to shame physicians for their work. While there was a huge lack of sanitation in the hospitals, due to the time period, the war was actually impressive with their treatments considering the resources they had. Although the hospitals that soldiers were treated in were thrown together and disorganized, ensuring chaos and the spread of disease, they were still impactful for the medicine practiced in the United

If Nightingale were alive today, she would find it strange hospitals exist at all. She regarded them as belonging to a stage of "imperfect civilization", and envisaged their end by the year 2000. Florence would have understood the growth of the primary care movement. Having its roots in her own work, she would have been alarmed by the conditions of acute care evident in some hospitals today. High bed-occupancy rates, the poor hygiene, and the lack of space and of privacy .All of which go against the central tenets of her writings.

You know what dreadful scenes you may have to go through when you reach Waterloo…” (Lancey). During this time period, women of higher social class and higher status where thought of frail and delicate, not able to withstand the horrors and aftermath of war, all while those of lower class, women included, used their own homes and resourses to help better the wounded of the battle, witnessing the injuries of war and possably putting them themselves through traumatizing expericances. Today, Nurse’s stationed to “Forward Surgical Teams provide acute care nursing and surgical nursing far forward on the battlefield to stabilize and resuscitate soldiers with life- and limb-threatening injuries. These teams are on the front lines” (American Nurse Today) almost as much as a typical grunt caught in a firefight. As time and society move from 1815 during The Battle of Waterloo, to 1945 when the Germans failed to complete their objective in The Battle of The

When one hears the name, Florence Nightingale, the word nurse is instantly paired with it because of her contributions to nursing. Florence Nightingale became a national heroine after nursing the British troops at Scutari in the Crimean War during 1854-56 and became a pioneer for nursing using sanitary and administrative techniques. According to editor, Lynn McDonald, in Florence Nightingale- An Introduction to Her Life and Family: Collected Works of Florence Nightingale, Vol. 1, “Nightingale’s work on the foundation of nursing was a life-long preoccupation, but it was a part of a broader concern to reform public healthcare, prevent disease, and promote health” (84). However, many historians believe her ignorance of sanitation caused the death toll at Scutari to rise.

For medical practitioners in the field during the civil war, germ theory, clean medical practices, advanced equipment, and organized hospitalization systems were virtually unknown. In the battle fields it was better known to amputate the hurt body part than to get medical help from the hospital. During battle in 1864 a solider had his leg amputated. Many more men like him have given up their arm, leg, toe, or even their whole foot to save their life. Hospitals were crowded upstairs and downstairs. Battlefields were overcrowded with amputated feet, legs, and many dead bodies. Nurse Walt Whitman

This shows that even her sister knows that she gets what she wants. She also wants to become a nurse even though her family does not approve. In scene one she also shows us that she is caring like the time cousin Jerry fell she helped him by heating up water and getting clean bandages. As you can see from the reason above Florence is caring and gets what she wants.

In the 1770 care shifted from being done in home by family and neighbors, to women coming out of the home and onto the battlefront to care for wounded men. These women were usually the wives, daughters, and mothers of the men fighting, because without them at home to provide for them the women could not sustain their families. Since these women followed the soldier’s camps through the war they started being incorporated into the care of the wounded men, because the military felt that women would show more compassion to the soldiers than other men would. In 1751 America’s first hospital opened in Philadelphia, but most people did not view hospitals as safe, and preferred to be cared for at home still as they ailed, because at home they

Many soldiers became ill, their immune systems weakened and the presence of contagious disease meant that many men were in hospital for sickness, not wounds. Doctors were instructed to be vigilant in cases of ‘malingering’, where soldiers pretended to be ill or wounded themselves so that they did not have to fight. The object of the treatment was to get the men back to the trenches as quickly as possible, or to ensure that they were ‘invalided out’ as fit as possible and would therefore only require a small pension, so that they did not cost their country a lot of money. The First World War changed the ways that soldiers were cared for when they were wounded. New technologies including blood transfusion, control of infection, and improved surgery

Florence Nightingale was an independent woman. She never married or had kids. When she was called by God to do his service, she desperately tried to break out of the shell of what was expected of her. During the period of time she lived in, Florence was expected to get married and spend her days at parties or taking care of her children. Despite the way she was raised, this is not how Florence turned out.