In larger chests, dressings and plasters were included for minor wounds, as were burns treatments. They also included a variety of instruments like a mortar and pestle, scales, measures, spatula and lancet. Florence Nightingale had such a chest, as we will see.
Bottles of medicine in the main compartment
Small instruments in the bottom drawer
From her late teens, Florence Nightingale (1820–1910) became captivated by the idea of becoming a nurse; a passion that distressed her parents as nursing was viewed as an unfit profession for respectable women. Florence studied nursing secretly, defying her parents and the expectations of society, which, she believed, rendered middle class women unable to make full use of their energy and intelligence.
Nightingale had been working at a Harley St nursing home when she learned of the horrific conditions facing British army soldiers in their Crimean War hospital base. The British Secretary of State for War asked her to lead a team of 38 nurses to make urgent improvements in Scutari. She was told that with no understanding of the necessity for good hygiene in preventing disease, almost as many British soldiers were dying from illness and exposure as from wounds.
She became the best known name of the Crimean War (1853-56) when she and the nurses went out to Scutari hospital in Istanbul Turkey in Nov 1854, to run the soldiers' hospital. Faced with these appalling conditions and the hostility of army doctors, all the nurses worked tirelessly, walking the hospital corridors to attend to thousands of casualties, bringing organisation, new supplies and cleanliness, dedicated to reducing the spread of infection. Florence did indeed find that the young men were dying at an alarming rate, from diseases like dysentery caught in the hospital.
Back in UK, the rest of Nightingale’s life were dedicated to transforming healthcare, stressing the vital importance of hand washing and cleanliness. Nightingale was passionate about using stats and research to physically change the design and structure of hospitals in ways relevant still - ward design, nurse training, hygiene, infection control and the compassionate treatment of patients. Meantime Florence was herself suffering from fever, insomnia and exhaustion.
The Florence Nightingale Museum in Lambeth Palace Rd London opened in 1989. It is located in the grounds of St Thomas’ Hospital, close to the Houses of Parliament. The Nightingale in 200 Objects, People & Places Exhibition marked the 200th anniversary of her birth.
See a speech to the staff and trainees of The Nightingale Training School for Nurses showed her as a pioneer of evidence-based health care: gathering data to prove the importance of cleanliness and sanitation, her passion for data led to her being the first female member of the Royal Statistical Society.
Bottles of medicine removed from the main compartment to read the labels clearly
The nurses and soldier’s wives cleaned shirts and sheets; bed pans & toilets were emptied; scrubbing brushes, buckets, blankets & operating tables were purchased from donations. Nightingale’s related writings, packed with advice, were put on display: You ought to use fresh water as freely for the skin ..as fresh air for the lungs (Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes, 1868).
Exhibition Display #28 was the medicine chest (c1855) that Florence took to the Crimean War. It contained medicines like quinine to treat malaria and carbonate of potassium for fever. It also contained a tiny set of scales, and a glass beaker for carefully measuring liquids. The chest was beautifully designed and crafted, making it transportable over distant and rugged travel.
Nightingale led her nurses to Scutari, to bring order, cleanliness and new supplies to the wards where the wounded were being treated. She took this medicine chest for her and her nurses to use, most of the medicines being for upset stomachs or diarrhoea. But was it the only chest for all those sick men?? Could the medicine bottles be refilled in Turkey? The only comfort came from knowing that even when the men died in the nurses’ care, they died under loving conditions.
Mary Seacole's medicines
The nurses and soldier’s wives cleaned shirts and sheets; bed pans & toilets were emptied; scrubbing brushes, buckets, blankets & operating tables were purchased from donations. Nightingale’s related writings, packed with advice, were put on display: You ought to use fresh water as freely for the skin ..as fresh air for the lungs (Notes on Nursing for the Labouring Classes, 1868).
Exhibition Display #28 was the medicine chest (c1855) that Florence took to the Crimean War. It contained medicines like quinine to treat malaria and carbonate of potassium for fever. It also contained a tiny set of scales, and a glass beaker for carefully measuring liquids. The chest was beautifully designed and crafted, making it transportable over distant and rugged travel.
Nightingale led her nurses to Scutari, to bring order, cleanliness and new supplies to the wards where the wounded were being treated. She took this medicine chest for her and her nurses to use, most of the medicines being for upset stomachs or diarrhoea. But was it the only chest for all those sick men?? Could the medicine bottles be refilled in Turkey? The only comfort came from knowing that even when the men died in the nurses’ care, they died under loving conditions.
Photo credit: Helen Rappaport
Note that Nightingale’s contemporary, nurse Mary Seacole, also arrived at the Crimean War equipped with a medicine chest filled with her herbal remedies. Pomegranate bark was ground to a paste, for example, to be used for the expulsion of tapeworms and as a purgative. Seacole demonstrated that her home-grown Jamaican practice of hygiene, healthy food, natural remedies and kindness had as much to offer as traditional medicine. Thus she made her nursing practice a more holistic one.
Florence Nightingale Museum reopened after the coronavirus lockdown from the 1st August 2020 onwards, with timed tickets Thurs-Sunday. Do visit.
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14 comments:
The medicine chest was as carefully created as any other small pieces of furniture
Hello Hels, As wonderful as are modern medical discoveries, such as antibiotics and nano-medicines, it is amazing to think that most medical crises in history could be treated with simple hygiene. To be fair, there were people throughout history that advised cleanliness and good nutrition, but until about the 20th century this advice was largely ignored. In the U.S. Civil War, just a few years after Nightingale stocked her medicine chest, diseases such as dysentery were still the major cause of death, not battle injuries.
--Jim
What a determined individual. She had much to overcome to achieve her dream of becoming a nurse. I have yet to visit the Museum but I will one day.
Boa tarde. A medicina é muito especial em nossos dias.
I am not surprised that the army doctors were hostile to this group of compassionate nurses. The men had run the hospital perfectly well, according to their own perspective.
Deb
agreed. When the chest was kept in the home, it had to be as beautifully made as any other mahogany chest of drawers on display, only smaller. When the chest travelled by ship, it had to be so well designed to survive salty sea water and crashing waves.
Parnassus
depending on the geographical location of 19th century wars, it was absolutely true that more young men died from pneumonia, typhoid, malaria, dysentery-diarrhoea etc than from war wounds. Even in WW1, trench fever and rat bites were catastrophic.
Fun60
By the mid 19th century, nurses could only have been Catholic nuns or prostitutes. No wonder the wealthy, scholarly, Unitarian Nightingale family were horrified when Florence wanted to become a nurse.
To understand Florence's struggle to study and practise nursing pre-Crimea, read
https://melbourneblogger.blogspot.com/2014/02/had-florence-nightingale-ever-been.html
Luiz
medicine is very effective now, as you say. But even so, there are still doctors who ban childhood inoculations because they "cause" autism etc etc. We still have a lot to learn, I believe.
Joseph
Male doctors, who had trained for years, were furious when "ignorant girls" insisted that hospital conditions were killing soldiers as fast as the enemy had. Even though they didn't know about antibiotics etc, Nightingale and the nurses knew the importance of clean bandages and bedding, fresh air, nourishing food and tender care.
It would be fascinating to know if the contents of these boxes of remedies actually did anything other than Placebo effect . I wonder if anyone has looked at their scientific Objective effect on the illnesses they were supposedly treating .I know laudanum was responsible for a great deal of misery as was described by Jane Austin in Mansfield Park where Lady Bertram definitely has a drug problem . Often ladies were described as having a "delicate constitution" which was code fro prolapse caused by difficult childbirth and then of course treated by bed rest and laudanum . The bed rest was so that they could control their bladders.
Evidently Florence herself suffered a great deal , probably from PTSD after the war and apparently spent a great deal of time in bed and suffering from"emotional exhaustion " What a woman though . .
mem
even if some of the medicines had zero impact or worse, I think the nurses' contribution to the young soldiers' welfare was vast. Carefully cleaning and bathing the bodies really did reduce the spread of infection, and the fresh air and decent food helped repair their sad bodies. Ditto Florence opened a laundry so that sick soldiers would have clean linens.
While in Crimea, Florence had contracted the bacterial infection brucellosis, which was different from PTSD, and stayed largely in bed for life. But it didn't reduce her intellectual and political activities... which became more effective as time went on.
A very smart person. Didn't the Romans know about cleanliness for disease prevention yet along the centuries (dark ages?) it seemed to be forgotten and had to be relearnt, again and again including here in our own city in the 19th century.
Andrew
Roman doctors certainly knew enough to have swamps drained to prevent malaria spreading, and to send patients to public baths to cleanse their bodies. But they couldn't stop families using chamber pots inside their houses, and couldn't stop the faeces being tipped onto the streets. If only the learning went on in a linear pattern throughout the centuries that followed.
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