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
Miss Nightingale's "Observations" form a synopsis of the whole subject.
Giving chapter and verse from the Stational reports for each of her
statements, she shows, first, that the prevailing diseases were camp
diseases such as she had seen in the Crimean War--largely due to the
selection of unsuitable sites. Among the causes were Bad Water, Bad
Drainage, Filthy Bazaars, Want of Ventilation, and Surface Overcrowding
in barrack-huts and sick-wards. Her remarks under these several heads
are often characteristically racy. "Where tests have been used, the
composition of the water reads like a very intricate prescription,
containing nearly all the chlorides, sulphates, nitrates, and carbonates
in the pharmacopoeia, besides silica and quantities of animal and
vegetable matter, which the reports apparently consider nutritive." "If
the facilities for washing were as great as those for drink, our Indian
army would be the cleanest body of men in the world." "There is no
drainage, in any sense in which we understand the word. The reports
speak of cesspits as if they were dressingrooms." "Except where the two
Lawrences have been--there one can always recognize their traces--the
bazaars are simply in the first savage stage of social savage life."
Under the head of "Overcrowding," she brings together various instances
with figures and woodcuts; she quotes one report which said that the men
(300 men per room!) "are generally accommodated in the barrack without
inconvenient overcrowding," and she asks, "What is _convenient_
overcrowding?" "At some stations the floors are of earth, varnished over
periodically with cow-dung: a practice borrowed from the natives. Like
Mahomet and the mountain, if men won't go to the dunghill, the dunghill,
it appears, comes to them." Her next section, on "Intemperance," is
scathing. In India, as at home,[16] it was a current opinion of the time
that the soldier is by nature a drunken animal; the only question seemed
to be as to how he had better get drunk. At one station, though the men
were reported as "mostly temperate," she found that on a ten years'
average one man in three was admitted into hospital directly from drink.
"The men are killed by liver disease on canteen spirits to save them
from being killed by liver disease on bazaar spirits. May there not be
some middle course whereby the men may be killed by neither?" Under
"Diet," she notes the absurdity of a uniform ration, in amount and
quality, in all seasons and climates; and ventures to doubt whether
cesspits are desirable adjuncts of kitchens. Her next head is "Want of
Occupation and Exercise"--a fruitful source of vice and disease. It is a
most interesting chapter, full of valuable hints and illustrated by an
amusing drawing, sent to her by Colonel Young, of "Daily Means of
Occupation and Amusement _passim_." Here, as in much else of Miss
Nightingale's work, she collected all the better opinions; she picked
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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