Page:Notes on Nursing What It Is, and What It Is Not.djvu/16

FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE. Not a moment was lost in unnecessary delay, or in preliminary preparations. Miss Nightingale formed, from some hundreds who offered, a band of thirty-seven nurses—many of them, like herself, volunteers from the higher ranks of life, gentle ladies, accustomed to ease and luxury, but not unused to tend the suffering or the dying, nor to lead lives of charity and self-denial. Twelve nuns from the Convent at Norwood, under charge of their superioress, an Irish lady, proffered their services, and were gladly included in the noble corps; for the holy leader of the band was no narrow-minded bigot, and did not doubt but that a basin of gruel, a glass of wine, or a cup of medicine, might perhaps be administered as tenderly by a hand which clasped a missal as by one which touched a Testament. When every thing was ready, Florence Nightingale bade farewell to her fond parents and her affectionate sister, renounced her friendships and her intellectual pleasures, and quitted the comforts of her home, the quiet liberty of dear old England, for a perilous journey to a land teeming with danger and disease.

She and her sister-laborers, prompted by the most sincere, charitable, and religious feelings which can inspire the human heart, and undaunted by the length of the voyage, the strange and distant country before them, the awful scenes they would encounter, or the privations they would have to endure, started for their destination on Tuesday, the 24th of October, 1854. Surely, if there was heroism in dashing up the heights of Alma, seeking glory at the cannon's mouth in defiance of death and of all mortal opposition, amid the shouts of the victors and the cries of the vanquished, there was heroism unparalleled in calmly volunteering to minister to the fever-stricken and the dying in a place reeking with deadly disease and polluted air, where "wounds almost refused to heal, and where the heavy smell of pestilence could be perceived outside the very walls," and surrounded by sights and sounds calculated to appall the stoutest hearts.

They were accompanied by Mr. and Mrs. Bracebridge, a clergyman, and a courier. On their arrival at Boulogne, the self-devoted band was hailed with demonstrations of sympathy and respect by a crowd which assembled to welcome them on their way, and bid them "God speed." In passing through France, they were received with the utmost enthusiasm; hotel-keepers refusing payment for their accommodation, servants declining the customary fees, all emulating to evince admiration and sympathy. One of the Paris journals, on Miss Nightingale's passing through the French metropolis, observed of her that "her toilette was charming, and she was almost as graceful as a Parisienne." On the 27th, they sailed from Marseilles, in the Vectis steamer, for Constantinople.

On the 5th of November, Miss Nightingale, accompanied by Mr. and Mrs, Bracebridge, and her nurses, arrived at Constantinople; and the whole party was speedily established at their new quarters in the Barrack Hospital at Scutari. This was a handsome building, capable of holding an immense number of soldiers; the court-yard alone being sufficiently large to afford space for exercising twelve thousand men, and the corridors, running the whole length of the barrack, being estimated to comprise four miles in extent. On three sides of the building were galleries, in which were ranged in double rows the beds of the patients. Five rooms, which had been set apart for wounded general officers, were happily vacant; and these were assigned to Miss Nightingale and her friends. iv