The Lafcadio Hearn Virtual iDiary, Page 119
AUGUST and SEPTEMBER, 2010
Florence Nightingale writes in her diary.
Scutari Barracks Hospital, Constantinople
November 4, 1854
Dear Diary,
We sailed on the Vestis from Malta on Hallowe'en arriving four days later at Scutari.
We have a gigantic task in this land unknown to my 38 English nurses and to me.
Tonight I made the first rounds of the wards.
One poor fellow burst into tears as he cried, "I can't help it. When I see them I only think of English women coming out here to nurse us. It seems so homelike and comfortable."
I am responsible for the nursing staffs of all 8 military hospitals.
I personally administer to the twelve thousands wounded in this great Scutari Barracks Hospital lent to Great Britain by the Sultan's authorities.
The building is very good. However, we've discovered inside filth, pestilence, misery, and disorder.
In endless corridors, the wounded men lay closely packed without the commonest decencies or necessities of life.
The wounded arrive by ferry from the battlefields.
To get to the hospital at the top of this hill, wounded men walk, are dragged, or are carried up the hill in a long line of suffering humanity.
Invalids take care of invalids. The dying take care of the dying.
They've no soap, no towels, no hospital clothes. They simply lie in their uniforms covered with filth and vermin that crawl about the floors and walls.
Empty beer bottles are candle sticks. There's no bed furniture. Men lay on the corridor floors, their limbs attacked by rats. I dislodged one rat with a folded umbrella.
Six dogs in a state of decomposition lay under a window.
I have completed my first round of Scutari wards. Beds are reeking of infection.
I am heartbroken
We shall immediately distribute ten thousand sheets. It's a starter in cleaning up this hospital.
We are grappling with disease, suffering, and death. But, we are going to bring order out of chaos at Scutari Hospital.
Florence Nightingale writes again in her diary.
November 6, 1854
It has been 24 hours since the British defeated the Russians at the battle of Inkerman, November 5, 1854.
The wounded are arriving in appalling numbers. Soon, every inch of space in the Barracks Hospital will be filled with sufferers.
Lafcadio's Father, 38 yearold Army Surgeon Charles Bush Hearn, writes in his diary.
Dcember 4, 1854
Scutari Barracks Hospital
It has been a month since help arrived: 38 nurses and their "LadyinChief, the official title of the head nurse in charge and whose name is Florence Nightingale.
Florence is fair in complexion and slim in person. Her hair is brown and worn quite plain. Her eyes are a bluish tint sparkling with intelligence.
She fitted an impromptu kitchen from which 800 men are being supplied with food that she brought on the ship Vestis. Beef tea, chicken broth, jelly, and little delicacies.
The poor fellows can often only express their gratitude in voices halfchoked with sobs.
All ready available for the sick are thirty gallons of chicken broth and 40 gallons of arrowroot.
Miss Nightingale has established a laundry for disinfecting clothing of fever and cholera.
The nurses have rented a house and turned it into a sanitary laundry washing 500 sheets each week.
The common soldier is Ms. Nightingale's concern. She has issued bales of shirts, socks, slippers, dressing gowns, and everything assuring comfort and cleanliness.
Every night she passes along all the corridors carrying a little lamp lighting her progress of mercy and love.
Poem: "Lady with the Lamp"
A Lady with a lamp shall stand
In the Great history of the land
A noble type of good
Heroic womanhood.
By Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Photo below: Lady with the Lamp
