The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2Cook, Edward Tyas, Sir
History
The Life of Florence Nightingale, vol. 2 of 2
Cook, Edward Tyas, Sir
Nightingale, Florence, 1820-1910
She died as she had lived, at her post in one of the largest
workhouse infirmaries in the Kingdom. She lived the life, and died
the death, of the saints and martyrs; though the greatest sinner
would not have been more surprised than she to have heard this said
of herself. In less than three years she had reduced one of the
most disorderly hospital populations in the world to something like
Christian discipline, such as the police themselves wondered at.
She had converted a vestry to the conviction of the economy as well
as humanity of nursing pauper sick by trained nurses. She had
converted the Poor-Law Board--a body, perhaps, not usually given to
much enthusiasm. She had disarmed all opposition, all sectarian
zealotism; so that Roman Catholic and Unitarian, High Church and
Low Church, all literally rose up and called her "blessed." All, of
all shades of religious creed, seemed to have merged their
differences in her, seeing in her the one true essential thing,
compared with which they acknowledged their differences to be as
nothing. And aged paupers made verses in her honour after her
death.
In less than three years--the time generally given to the ministry
on earth of that Saviour whom she so earnestly strove closely to
follow--she did all this. She had the gracefulness, the wit, the
unfailing cheerfulness--qualities so remarkable but so much
overlooked in our Saviour's life. She had the absence of all
asceticism, or "mortification," for mortification's sake, which
characterized His work, and any real work in the present day as in
His day. And how did she do all this? She was not, when a girl, of
any conspicuous ability, except that she had cultivated in herself
to the utmost a power of getting through business in a short time,
without slurring it over and without fid-fadding at it;--real
business--her Father's business. She was always filled with the
thought that she must be about her "Father's business." How can any
undervalue business-habits? as if anything could be done without
them. She could do, and she did do, more of her Father's business
in six hours than ordinary women do in six months, or than most of
even the best women do in six days.... What she went through during
her workhouse life is scarcely known but to God and to one or two.
Yet she said that she had "never been so happy in all her life."
All the last winter she had under her charge above 50 nurses and
probationers, above 150 pauper scourers, from 1290 to 1350
patients, being from two to three hundred more than the number of
beds. All this she had to provide for and arrange for, often
receiving an influx of patients without a moment's warning. She had
to manage and persuade the patients to sleep three and four in two
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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