Newspaper Page Text
2
(An Address Before the Trained Nurses.)
MAKE no apology, not the slight
est, for speaking primarily to the
nurses of the city. First of all, I
feel that they deserve it; second,
I feel that they, like all other
classes, need it. I have preached,
and heard sermons preached, to
almost every class of people in our
city since I have been a resident
r— —)
- —.
of it; I myself have preached to lawyers and
doctors and merchants and policemen and rail
road men, and almost all classes that I know
anything about, but never until this time have
I felt led to preach to this class, the trained
nurses. I do not feel at all that this is be
cause I have failed to appreciate their value or
their need. I stand ready at all times to take
my hat off to the noble, conscientious, faith
ful nurses. When I get sick I think of the
nurse almost with the same thought that I
think of the doctor, and if one can be had, I
am going to have her. And I want that she
will be a woman, too, under all circumstances
and everywhere.
This is a profession that is adapted to wo
men. I do not think God ever intended a wo
an to practice law. Some of them are doing
it, but I think they are always out of place.
I do not think that God ever intended a wo
man to run a steam engine, although I hear
that a woman out West is an engineer, run
ning a locomotive engine. There are a great
many other professions that I do not think
God ever intended a woman to enter, and
there are some professions that I do not think
God ever intended a man to enter. And this
is one of them. Sometime ago a man came to
me and said he wanted to talk to me about
entering our training school at the hospital.
“What sort of training school?” I asked. I
thought, perhaps, he meant in the laundry,
and he said. “Why, to be trained for a nurse.”
I said, “You will have to excuse me, my
friend; I would not have you.” God never
intended an old, clumsy, all-thumbed man to
be a nurse.
I am to talk to you tonight about Florence
Nightingale, of whom Longfellow wrote, “She
is the woman with the lantern in hand.” I
do not believe there has ever lived in this
world, in ancient or modern times, a greater
woman than Florence Nightingale. She died
while we were crossing the Atlantic this sum
mer, and when we got to England she was
there lying in state and hundreds and thous
ands of people had looked upon her form. And
the newspapers and magazines of England
were all full of glowing tributes to her life
and memory.
Much that I am saying tonight is gathered
from these published reports, and also from
her biography, which is now on sale and be
ing read everywhere. And so thrilled have I
been by the story of her remarkable life that
I thought it would be an inspiration to you
women in white in your professional career
if you could have related to you the facts con
cerning her as I gathered them in the way
that you could not gather them.
Florence Nightingale was born in the year
1820. She was born in the city of Florence,
Italy. Her parents were living in Florence for
a short time. Their home being in Lea, Eng
land, a little town in Darbyshire. The name-
Florence Nightingale seems to me to have
been rather a prophecy. Certainly it is inter
esting. The city of Florence means the city
of flowers and the name Nightingale is the
name of England’s famous songbird that ranks
bv the side of our famous mocking bird.
Florence Nightingale therefore literally meant
a song bird among the flowers.
After her birth, her parents moved back to
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
Tabernacle Sermon by Reb, Len G. Broughton, D.D.
Stenorraphlcally reported for The Golden Age.—Copyright applied for.
The Golden Age for April 20,
the little town of Lea, in England, where her
early life was spent. When she was but a
child there was, somehow, a knowledge that
she had and a love that she evidenced for
the sick and suffering about her that no ordi
nary child ever possessed. It is said that she
forever was nursing a sick doll. She kept them
sick so that she might enjoy nursing them, and
she became the doll doctor and the doll nurse
of the whole neighborhood; she was sent for
by all the children around about to come and
do up the broken limbs of their dolls and put
back their eyes that had been knocked out
and such other great and scientific surgical
feats. As she grew older she became inter
ested in caring for sick animals, and it was
almost impossible for her parents to keep her
from the fields where the sheep were herded
where she would walk for hours with the
shepherds and talk with them about their
sheep. Her first patient was a dog, and it
came about this way: She was riding with
her teacher, the vicar of the village church,
and they passed by a shepherd who was trying
to get his sheep together. She asked the shep
herd where his dog was, and he answered,
“The dog is crippled. Some bad boys got to
throwing rocks at him and broke one of his
legs. As soon as I can get the sheep together
I am going to kill him and get him out of his
misery.” She asked where he was, and he
told her he was in a little house on the hill.
She asked the vicar to let her go there and
see the dog. She found him lying on the
floor with his leg broken. She heated some
water and took her apron off and tore it into
strips and made bandages and bathed that lame
foot until the irritation was somewhat relieved,
and then dried it carefully, put the limb to
gether and put splints on it. I have no doubt
it was a surgical job. After she finished it
she joined the vicar on the drive. In a few
days the dog walked about and in a little while
his limb had united.
Os course, this spread all through the neigh
borhood, and little Florence Nightingale was
sent for work all over that neighborhood to
look after the dogs, etc. At this time, however,
her mother became very solicitous of her. She
fancied that she would give herself to the pro
fession of nursing, if it could be called a pro
fession at that time. Her mother did not want
her daughter to give herself to such work, for
nursing then was hardly respectable. To over
come the difficulty it was planned that Flor
ence, in the care of a teacher, should spend
three years on the continent of Europe, trav
eling through France, Germany, Italy, and
Switzerland. She developed wonderfully in
the study of the languages, and at the age of
seventeen could speak four languages fluently,
French, German, Italian and English.
Her mother was taken with a serious illness
and lay for months upon her bed of suffering,
and Florence was her nurse. When her moth
er got well, she called Florence in one day and
said, “Though it almost breaks my heart to
think of it, I cannot any longer stand in the
way of your wish to be a nurse. I hat sweet,
gentle touch that you have is a gift from God,
and the cold hearted world needs you.” It is
said to have been the happiest day in Florence
Nightingale’s life when her mother and father
gave their consent for her to enter this pro
fession which she had felt was put upon her
by Almighty God. In a little while she went
to London, and entered one of the hospitals
there. She stayed only a short time because
she saw that this hospital was no place for
her. She saw that the nurses in the hospital
were merely menial servants, and that was not
her conception of nursing. She came back to
her home and studied under the village doctor,
for something like two years. About this time
she learned that there was over in Germany
on the Rhine an institution conducted by the
German Luthern church, a mission hospital,
where young women were taken and trained as
professional nurses, after which they were ad
mitted to the Order of the Deaconess, which
was one of the orders of the German Lutheran
church. She went to this institution, matricu
lated and spent two years in hard study and
work. She graduated with honor, and after
her graduation was admitted into the Order
of the Deaconess, and served in that capacity.
But all the while there was burning in her
heart a desire to reform, reshape, uplift and
save the profession of nursing.
She went back to London and upon her re
turn organized the Order of the Deaconess in
the city of London; and began to train a group
of young women for the profession of the Dea
coness, which was also the profession of the
nurse. She grouped around her first and last
hundreds of these women of high life and
trained them and sent them forth into the pau
per districts of the city of London to nurse
the sick and to save the poor benighted people.
It was while engaged in this kind of work
that Great Britain declared war against Rus
sia, and hundreds and thousands of young men
were sent to the field of battle. There was no
such thing then as the Red Cross Order. There
was no such a thing as a nurse in any army.
The hospitals were crowded to overflowing
with Englands best and brightest boys, and
on one occasion, a correspondent to the London
press wrote a letter to his paper in London,
and in that letter after describing the horror of
the battlefield and of the hospitals, he said that
thousands of England’s young men were suf
fering and dynig for the lack of attention; he
raised the wail, “Oh, are there not in England
some good women that will volunteer their
services and con»e to this field of suffering and
death and give themselves to the care of their
brothers!”
Florence Nightingale, though a busy wo
man at that time, read that article, and when
her eyes fell upon that wail, the tears fell, and
she dropped upon her knees and gave herself
to God and Great Britain. She went to the
heads of the department and told them of her
conviction and of her resolution and of her
training and education. And the people of
Great Britain knew what that meant for they
knew of Florence Nightingale’s ability, and
they at once accepted her, and made a propo
sition to her. She accepted their proposition
upon two conditions. First, that they would
furnish her with sufficient means to equip the
hospitals; and second, that they would give
her entire control when she entered upon the
discharge of her duties. They readily agreed
to do both. She at once gathered about her
fifty of these women that she had trained,
among them some of England's nobility, and
she started out for the field of battle.
She first took charge of the hospitals and
distributed the nurses as best she could. She
was afterwards able to bring from England
hundreds of others to enter upon this field of
service, and after she had manned the hospitals
and was able to take care of the suffering in
them, she gave herself to the more direct work
in that field of carnage. She felt it was nec
essary to follow right in the track of the soldier
boys themselves, and so she went to the front
and right in the midst of the firing line she
spent the rest of the days during the great and
bloody war. She would pitch her tent by the
side of the other officers of the army and her
genius of organization and methods of manip
ulation was such that the army adopted many
of her methods. On one occasion when one
of the strongest camps was about to be taken
(Continued on page 14.)