NIGHTINGALE, FLORENCE, famed for her labors in reforming the sanitary condition of the British army, is the daughter of Shore Nightingale of Embly park, Hampshire, and Leigh Hurst, Derbyshire, and was born at Florence in 1823. Highly educated, and brilliantly accomplished, she early exhibited an intense deVotion to the alleviation of suffering, which, in 1844, led her to give attention to the condition of hospitals. She visited and inspected civil and military hospitals all over Europe; studied with the sisters of charity in Paris the system of nursing and management carried out in the hospitals of that city; and, in 1851, went into training as a nurse in the institution of Protestant deaconesses at Kaiserswerth, on the Rhine. On her return to England, she put into thorough working order the sanitorium for governesses in connection with the London institution. Ten years was the term of apprenticeship thus served in prep aration for the work of her life. In the spring of 1854 war was declared with Russia and a British army of 25,000 men sailed to the east. Alma was fought Sept. 20, and the wounded from the battle were sent down to the hospitals prepared for their recep tion on the banks of the Bosporus. These hospitals were soon crowded with sick and wounded, and their unhealthy condition became apparent in a rate of mortality to which the casualties of the fiercest battle were as nothing. In this crisis Miss Night ingale offered to go out and organize a nursing department at Scutari. The late lord Herbert, then at the war-office, gladly accepted, and within a week from the date of the offer—viz., Oct. 21 —she departed with her nurses. She arrived at Constanti nople Nov. 4, the eve of Inkermann—the beginning of the terrible winter cam paign—in time to receive the wounded from that second battle into wards already filled with 2,300 patients. Her devotion to the sufferers can never be forgotten. She has stood twenty hours at a stretch, in order to see them provided with accommodation and !al the requisites of their condition, But she saw 'clearly in the bad sanitary arrange meats of the hospitals the causes of their frightful mortality, and her incessant labor was devoted to the removal of these causes, as well as to the mitigation of their effects. In the spring of 1855, while in the Crimea organizing the nursing-departments of the camp-hospitals, she was prostrated with fever, the result of unintermitting toil and anxiety; yet she refused to leave her post, and on her recovery remained at Scutari till Turkey was evacuated by the British, July 28, 1856. She, to whom many a soldier owes his life and health, had expended her own health in the physical and mental strain to which she had subjected herself. It is known that for years Miss Nightingale has been an invalid. It is not so well known that her sick-room has been the scene of the most arduous and constant labor for the improvement of the health of the soldier. In 1837
she furnished the "commissioners appointed to inquire into the regulations affecting the sanitary condition of the British army" with a paper of written evidence, in which she impresses, with the force and clearness which distinguish her mind, the great lesson of the Crimean war, which she characterizes as a sanitary experiment on a colossal scale. Her experience in the Crimea, the results obtained by the labors of the sanitary com mission, results accumulated under her own eyes, showing that the rate of mortality among soldiers could be reduced to one-half of what it was in time of peace at home, turned the attention of Miss Nightingale to the general question of army sanitary reform, and first to that of army hospitals. In 1858 she contributed two papers to the national association for the promotion of social science, on hospital construction and arrangements, afterwards published, along with her evidence before the commissioners, by J. J.W. Parker and son. The Notes on hospitals, from their clearness of arrangement and minuteness of detail, are most valuable to the architect, the engineer, and the medical officer. In 1858 she published her Notes on _Nursing, a little volume which is already among the treasured text-books of many a household. At the close of the Crimean war a fund was subscribed for the purpose of enabling her to form an institu tion for the training of nurses. The interest of the fund amounts to .€1400 per annum; and though no separate institution has been formed, it is spent in training a superior order of nurses in connection with St. Thomas's and King's college hospitals. In the •ear 1863 was issued the report of the commission on the sanitary condition of the army in India. The complete report, with evidence, occupies two folio volumes of nearly 1000 pages each. The second of these huge folios is filled with reports from every station in India, occupied by British and native troop3. These reports were sent in manuscript to Miss Nightingale. and at ptge 847 of vol. i. are inserted her observations upon this immense mass of evidence. In these observations, the facts are brought together in an order, and with an incisive, force of statement, which render it one of the most remarkable public papers ever penned. That report is likely to inaugurate a new era in the government of India; for the views of Miss Nightingale extend not only to the sanitary reform of the British army, but to that of the towns of India. In 1871 Miss Nightingale published Notes on Lying-in-Institutions, together with a proposal for organizing an Institution for training _Ililwines and Jlidleifery Nurses; in 1873, Life or Death in India, and (in Fraser's Magazine) "A Note' of interrogation," which attracted good deal of attention, mainly on account of the way she handles religious beliefs and