Florence Nightingale

Today we will be:Finding out why Florence Nightingale went to Scutari and what hospital conditions were like when she got there.

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What can you remember about Florence Nightingale? Write your ideas below.

This painting shows some of the fighting of the Crimean War. What can you see in this picture? Nextwww.planbee.com

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A few years after Florence Nightingale had trained to be a nurse, Britain went to war with Russia. This was called the Crimean War as the fighting took place in the

Crimea.

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The worn-out pensioners who were brought out as an ambulance corps are totally useless, and not only are surgeons not to be had, but there are no dressers or nurses to carry out the surgeon's directions and to attend on the sick during intervals between his visits. Here the French are greatly our superiors. Their medical arrangements are extremely good, their surgeons more numerous, and they have also the help of the Sisters of Charity, who have accompanied the expedition in incredible numbers. These devoted women are excellent nurses.

Florence Nightingale read about the war in the newspaper. This is one report that she read in ‘The Times’ on 13th October 1854:

Florence and 38 other nurses set off for the hospital in Scutari, Turkey on 21st October 1854.

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Florence wanted to help and she was given the opportunity when Sidney Herbert, the

Secretary of State for War who knew Florence, decided that she was just the kind of person that was needed in the Crimea to

help care for the sick and wounded soldiers. He asked her if she would like to take a team of nurses out there and she

immediately agreed. Sidney Herbert

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Great Britain

The Crimea

Russia

France

Turkey

Italy

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Scutari

This map shows the route Florence Nightingale took to get to the hospital in Scutari.

How do you think Florence and the other

nurses would have travelled to Scutari?

Greece

What do you think the journey would have been like?

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The journey took two weeks and involved of travel by horse and carriage and a sailboat called ‘Vectis’. The weather was bad for most of the trip and the conditions were terrible. There were lots of cockroaches and it

was very uncomfortable. Florence Nightingale suffered from sea sickness for most of the journey.

This picture shows where the party landed on 4th

November 1854.

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What do you think Florence Nightingale and the other nurses found when they finally arrived at

the hospital?

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Think, pair, share your ideas.

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This picture shows the Scutari hospital when Florence Nightingale arrived. What can you see?

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© The Florence Nightingale Museum

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The conditions in the hospital were worse than Florence could have imagined. There were soldiers lying on dirty floors still wearing their bloody, filthy

clothes. There were not enough blankets for each man and there were insects everywhere.

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During the Crimean War, more soldiers died in hospital than they did on the battlefield. Only 1 in 6 deaths at the hospital were due to war wounds. The rest resulted from diseases or infections caused

by the poor conditions.

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The only toilets were chamber pots that were shared by lots of men. The men had very little food and no medical supplies, such as bandages or medicine. At this time, people did not know about how diseases were spread. The overcrowded and dirty wards, as well as the fact that a surgeon would operate on one man and then move on to the

next without cleaning his hands or equipment, meant that infections and diseases (such as cholera and typhus) quickly spread throughout the soldiers.

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