LADY WITH THE LAMP

When all the medical officers have retired for the night, and silence and darkness have settled  down upon those miles of prostrate sick, she may be observed alone, with a little lamp in her hand, making her solitary rounds.          
-London’s The Times                      
November 1854

Ask people what they know about the Crimean War and you’ll undoubtedly get a blank look.  Mention Florence Nightingale and you’ll at least get a nod.


In November 1854, 35 British female nurses reported for duty in the Crimean War and encountered a nightmare of human suffering. Spearheading the medical effort was Florence Nightingale. Here’s what the nurses found.

Typhus - Dysentery - Cholera - Malnutrition Filth - Lice - Fleas -Inadequate clothing - Wretched ventilation - Crushed morale - Overflowing latrines - Rodents - Inch-thick feces on hospital’s floor - Cesspool leaching into the drinking water

The genesis of the nursing profession lies on the Crimean peninsula with the Russian Sisters of Mercy, the French Sisters of Charity, and Florence Nightingale’s British nurses. Headway continued to be made by Clara Barton in U.S. Civil War.