The British nurse in peace and war / by Elizabeth S. Haldane.

  • Elizabeth Haldane
Date:
1923
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The British nurse in peace and war / by Elizabeth S. Haldane. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    to wars in their thousands, it is difficult to realize what the anxiety of managing these few women meant, and yet it was she who paved the way for the others, and had she not been able to justify the principle we should never have had these multitudes of nurses to-day. She worked out the scheme by which the nurses should have the necessary independence of existence while yet taking their due subordinate position in regard to the whole military organiza¬ tion. She had not only to nurse but to devise a system of sanitation. ''Not a basin, nor a towel, nor a bit of soap, nor a broom were there.'' Two hundred hard scrubbing-brushes and sacking for washing floors did wonders. The strongest will be wanted at the wash- tubs, she told her nurses. Such washing of bedding, etc., as was done was done in cold water. Miss Nightingale got boilers, engaged soldiers' wives to do the work, and at last pro¬ cured clean linen free of vermin. She also got extra diet kitchens started to supplement the coppers, and she was greatly helped in this part of the work by the arrival of Alexis Soyer, once the famous chef of the Reform Club. She found others to care for the women camp- followers, many of them in rags and tatters. Her own money and that collected through The Times was used for all of these efforts.