Transcript
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Gatorade, is it in you? It's early evening on the 9th of November, 1854, west of the Bosphorus, in what is now Istanbul. A mule trudges its way down an undulating path. Strapped to its back is a young man. His face is pale and drawn, his clothes flecked with blood, his head hanging limply, chin on his chest. He barely has the strength to breathe. He is not traveling alone. Behind him are dozens of others, bobbing listlessly on wagons and pack animals. This caravan of the wounded are all British casualties of the Battle of Inkerman, a victory over Russian forces in the Crimean War, but one that has come at a cost. For the past three days, injured soldiers have made this agonizing journey in desperate search of life saving care. At long last, their destination is in sight. An army barracks that has been converted into a hospital. Theoretically, this is their place of refuge. Yet the Scutari Barracks Hospital has an unwelcome reputation as somewhere where even the healthy can end up dead. At the entrance, the vehicles come to a halt. Orderlies hurry out and the young soldier is hauled onto a stretcher, carried inside and placed on a bed. Lifting his head, he sees a woman approaching. Wearing a simple black dress, her hair functionally short, she strides purposefully towards the new patients. Either side of her are rows of beds crammed just 18 inches apart. In each one is a soldier desperately ill or dreadfully injured. The woman is the new superintendent, a woman by the name of Florence Nightingale. She has been charged with bringing order to this place, less a refuge of healing, more a dank, overloaded cesspit, reeking of filth and death. In the few days she's been here, she's battled the hospital hierarchy to make all manner of changes, starting by clearing away the mounds of feces that splatter the floors. They're short of everything here, from mattresses to bedpans. And today, chaos has descended. Hundreds of men are arriving from the battlefield. Nightingale and her nurses do the best they can with paltry resources, but the volume of patient is overwhelming. And this is just the beginning. As the day goes on, wave after wave. Arrive at the hospital door 600 by nightfall and there'll be even more tomorrow. Soon the wards will be clogged with the mutilated and the traumatized. Later that evening, in the pitch dark, Ms. Nightingale walks through the packed rooms, her path illuminated by the dim light of a single lantern, she checks on each man in turn. Some will not make it to morning. But it's not just the battlefield injuries that will kill them. It's the invisible germs that surge their way around this horribly overcrowded building. Right now, Ms. Nightingale knows nothing about that, believing instead that the deaths are caused by medical incompetence, poor diet, noxious odors, pretty much anything other than the true cause. For all her obvious brilliance and determination, she is doing little to prevent the deaths of thousands in her career. Her hospital is a death trap. Revered as a heroine, mythologized as the lady with the Lamp, Florence Nightingale has gone down in history as the founder of modern nursing. Fortified by an indefatigable self belief, she battled ill health and the prejudices of her age to leave an indelible mark on the world. Yet her memory remains laden with misconception and half truths. So how did Florence Nightingale, the superintendent of a hellish incubator of disease in the Crimean War, become synonymous with kindness and compassion? Why was she one of the most celebrated figures of her age? And what did she achieve in the long decades of her life after illness cut short her nursing career? I'm John Hopkins from the Noiser Network. This is a short history of Florence Nightingale. Florence Nightingale is named after the city in which she is born on 12 May 1820. Her English parents, William and Fanny, are in Italy as part of an extended honeymoon. Florence is the couple's second child. Their first was born a year earlier in Naples, a girl they called Parthenope. William is the heir to a considerable fortune inherited from his great uncle, a wealthy industrialist, while his wife is the daughter of a crusading MP whose causes include the abolition of slavery and and freedom of religion. In 1821, the Young family moves back to England, splitting their time between two beautiful homes. Hannah Amos is the collections manager at the Florence Nightingale Museum in London.