Читать книгу The Life of Florence Nightingale (Vol. 1&2) - Edward Tyas Cook - Страница 66

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Dearth of creative brain-power showed itself in our Levantine hospitals, for there industrious functionaries worked hard at their accustomed tasks, and doggedly omitted to innovate at times when not to be innovating was surrendering, as it were, at discretion to want and misery. But happily, after a while, and in gentle, almost humble, disguise, which put foes of change off their guard, there acceded to the state a new power.—Kinglake.

Miss Nightingale reported the arrival of her expedition at Constantinople in a short note to her parents:—

Constantinople, November 4, on board Vectis.—Dearest People—Anchored off the Seraglio point, waiting for our fate whether we can disembark direct into the Hospital, which, with our heterogeneous mass, we should prefer.

At six o'clock yesterday morn I staggered on deck to look at the plains of Troy, the tomb of Achilles, the mouths of the Scamander, the little harbour of Tenedos, between which and the mainshore our Vectis, with steward's cabins and galley torn away, blustering, creaking, shrieking, storming, rushed on her way. It was in a dense mist that the ghosts of the Trojans answered my cordial hail, through which the old Gods, nevertheless, peered down from the hill of Ida upon their old plain. My enthusiasm for the heroes though was undiminished by wind and wave.

We made the castles of Europe and Asia (Dardanelles) by eleven, but also reached Constantinople this morn in a thick and heavy rain, through which the Sophia, Sulieman, the Seven Towers, the walls, and the Golden Horn looked like a bad daguerrotype washed out.

We have not yet heard what the Embassy or Military Hospital have done for us, nor received our orders.

Bad news from Balaclava. You will hear the awful wreck of our poor cavalry, 400 wounded, arriving at this moment for us to nurse. We have just built another hospital at the Dardanelles.

You will want to know about our crew. One has turned out ill, others will do.

(Later) Just starting for Scutari. We are to be housed in the Hospital this very afternoon. Everybody is most kind. The fresh wounded are, I believe, to be placed under our care. They are landing them now.

The Hospital, to which Miss Nightingale refers, was to be the chief scene of her labours for the next six months, and a few particulars about it and other hospitals, in which the nursing was under her superintendence, must be given in order to make future proceedings intelligible. The principal hospitals of the British army during the Crimean War—four in number—were at Scutari (or in its immediate neighbourhood), the suburb of mournful beauty which looks across to Constantinople from the Asiatic side of the Bosphorus.

The first hospital to be established was in the Turkish Military Hospital. This was made over to the British in May 1854, and was called by them The General Hospital. Having been originally designed for a hospital, and being given up to the English partially fitted, it was, wrote Miss Nightingale, “reduced to good order early, by the unwearied efforts of the first-class Staff Surgeon in introducing a good working system. It was then maintained in excellent condition till the close of the war.”83 It had accommodation for 1000 patients, but the Battle of the Alma showed that much larger accommodation would be wanted.

North of the General Hospital, and near to the famous Turkish cemetery of Scutari, are the Selimiyeh Barracks—a great yellow building with square towers at each angle. This building was made over to the British for use as a hospital after the Battle of the Alma, and by them was always called The Barrack Hospital. This is the hospital in which Miss Nightingale and her band of female nurses were first established, and in which she herself had her headquarters throughout her stay at Scutari. It is built on rising ground, in a beautiful situation, looking over the Sea of Marmora on one side, towards the Princes' Islands on another, and towards Constantinople and up the Bosphorus on a third. “I have not been out of the Hospital Walls yet,” wrote Miss Nightingale ten days after her arrival, “but the most beautiful view in all the world, I believe, lies outside.” Her quarters were in the north-west tower, on the left of the Main Guard (or principal entrance). There was a large kitchen or storeroom, of which we shall hear more presently, and out of it on either side various other rooms opened. Mr. Bracebridge and the courier slept in one small room; Miss Nightingale and Mrs. Bracebridge in another. The nurses slept in other rooms. The whole space occupied by Miss Nightingale and her nurses was about equal to that allotted to three medical officers and their servants, or to that occupied by the Commandant. “This was done,” she explained, “in order to make no pressure for room on an already overcrowded hospital. It could not have been done with justice to the women's health, had not Miss Nightingale later taken a house in Scutari at private expense, to which every nurse attacked with fever was removed.”84 The quarters were as uncomfortable as they were cramped. “Occasionally,” wrote Miss Nightingale, “our roof is torn off, or the windows are blown in, and we are under water for the night.” The Hospital was infested also with rodents and vermin; and, among other new accomplishments acquired under the stress of new occasions, Miss Nightingale became an expert rat-killer. This skill was afterwards called into use at Balaclava. In the spring of 1856, one of the nuns whom she had taken with her to the Crimea—Sister Mary Martha—had a dangerous attack of fever. Miss Nightingale nursed the case; and one night, while watching by the sick-bed, she saw a large rat upon the rafters over the Sister's head; she succeeded in knocking it down and killing it, without disturbing the patient.85 The condition of physical discomfort in which, surrounded by terrible scenes of suffering, she had to do her work, should be remembered in taking the measure of her fortitude and devotion.86

The maximum number of patients accommodated at any one time (Dec. 23, 1854) in the Barrack Hospital was 2434. It was half-an-hour's walk from the General Hospital, and an invalided soldier records that he used to accompany Miss Nightingale from one hospital to another in order to light her home on wet stormy nights, across the barren common which lay between them.

Farther south of the General Hospital, in the quarter of Haidar Pasha, was what was known as The Palace Hospital, consisting of various buildings belonging to the Sultan's Summer Palace. These were occupied as a hospital in January 1855. Miss Nightingale had no responsibility here; but in the summer of 1855, the female nursing of sick officers, quartered in one of these buildings, was placed under the superintendence of Mrs. Willoughby Moore, the widow of an officer who had died a noble death in the war, and four female nurses, sent out specially from England.

Finally, there were hospitals at Koulali, four or five miles farther north, upon the same Asiatic shore of the Bosphorus. These hospitals were opened in December 1854. The nursing in them was originally under Miss Nightingale's supervision, but she was presently relieved of it (p. 193 n.). The hospitals were broken up in November 1855, when, of the female nursing establishment, a portion went home, and the rest passed under Miss Nightingale into the hospitals at Scutari.

There were also five hospitals in the Crimea, but particulars of these may be deferred till the time comes for following Miss Nightingale upon her expeditions to the front. For the nursing in the Civil Military Hospitals (i.e. hospitals controlled by a civilian medical staff) at Renkioi (on the Dardanelles) and at Smyrna, and for the Naval Hospital at Therapia, Miss Nightingale had no responsibility, though there is voluminous correspondence among her papers showing that she was constantly consulted upon the site and arrangements of these hospitals. The medical superintendent of the hospital at Renkioi was Dr. E. A. Parkes, with whom Miss Nightingale formed a friendship which endured to the end of his life.