Florence Nightingale was rich and beautiful . Nearly every evening she was invited out to dinner or to a dance . London in the 1850s was agood place to live if you had plenty of money
But was Florence happy ? Not really . Deep inside her she wanted to do something useful and help others . She decided that she was going to work in ahospital . Her mother was horrified , because at that time hospitals was no place for a gentle young woman to work
But Florence had made up her mind . she went to work at anursing home in London . and in 1854 , she found a greater challenge . The British army was fighting a war in the Crimea , on the black sea . The sick and wounded soliders were sent to an army hospital in nearby Turkey. With a band of nurses, Florence sailed out to look after them . The women were shocked by what they found .
The hospital was a terrible place- far worse than hospitals in England . The patients were packed together and many lay on blankets on the mud . The doctors didn't have enough medicines or bandages . Out of every thousand patients , 420 died
At firstthe army doctors weren't quite sure of Florence because they'd never had nurses in their hospitals before. But Florence set to work. she had the floors scrubbed and drains cleaned.She arranged for food , clothes and medicines to be sent out
Every night she walked through the wards cattying a little lamp . She would stop and speak to any solider who couldn't sleep or who was in pain . they called her the lady with the lamp
After the war , Florence returned to London. In 1860 she founded the first training school for nurses. From then on , nurses were properly trained and educated , and had to pass an exam to qualify as a nurse
موضوع: The lady with a lamp 
الإثنين أبريل 02, 2012 12:01 pm
