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FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ENGLISH SOL...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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+ To The Well-Known Services Of Miss Nig...
Nightingale proceeded immediately to organise and arrange , stepingit is saidmore than once over those routine obstacles which
had p p , roved insurmoun , table to routine men , til ] order grew out of disorder , and gradually , cleanliness , comfort , and health , took the
place of those frightful scenes which awaited her first arrival . " We had , " says Miss Nightingale"in the first seven months of
, the Crimean campaign , a mortality among the troops at the rate of 60 per cent , per annum , from disease alone , —a rate of mortality
which exceeds that of the great plague in the population of London , and a higher ratio than the mortality in cholera to the attacks ; that
is to say , that there died out of the army in the Crimea an annual rate greater than ordinarily die in time of pestilence out of sick .
We had , during the last six months of the war , a mortality among our sick not much more than that among our healthy Gruards at home
and a mortality among our troops in the last five months two-thirds only of , what it is among our troops at home "
Thus , in the face of extraordinary causes of sickness , and under conditions of exposure and climate which would naturally be
supposed less favourable to the health of the soldier than the conditions to which he is exposed at home , we have , upon undoubted testimony ,
" a mortality a ? nong the sick not much more than that among our healthy Guards at home , and a mortality among our troops in the last _^ ve
months two-thirds only of what it is among our troops at home . " Again we find : — " At homethe guards and infantry of the line
, suffer more from consumption and chest diseases than men in civil life , at the same ages , from all diseases put together ,
" The Guards suffer twice as much from fever—more from fever in some barracks than in othersand more from epidemics in
, epidemic years than civil life . There is no a priori reason for this . " Such evidence as this needs no comment , nor is testimony
wanting from officers of long standing as to the known defective sanitary condition of the army at homebut it was reserved for a civilian
, , Mr . Sydney Herbert , to move inquiry into the matter . Now what does this testimony on the part of these officers prove ?—Either ,
that they were men whose moral courage was unequal to the moral responsibilities which rested upon them , or that , like the soldiers
whose health and lives were at stake , they were themselves the victimsin another formof a false system which admitted of no
, , appeal . In the course of Miss Nightingale's evidenceas to the difficulties
, experienced in obtaining food , clothing , bedding , medical comforts , extra diets , & cthe question is put to her : —
, " What appeared to be the cause of such difficulties ? " Now note the reply : —
" ( 3 ) The fear of being called a ' troublesome fellow / which , to _niy positive knowledgedeterred medical officers from making
, repeated requisitions for articles which they knew to be necessary
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Florence Nightingale And The English Sol...
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE AND THE ENGLISH SOLDIEB . 75
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), April 1, 1858, page 75, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01041858/page/3/
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