SANCTA FLORENTIA.

Manawatu Herald, Volume XXXII, Issue 905, 15 October 1910, Page 4

SANCTA FLORENTIA.

TRIBUTE TO FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

MEMORIES OF THE CRIMEA,

The following tribute to the memory of the late Florence Nightingale was written from Constantinople by Sir Edwin Pears :

The traditions of Florence Nightingale at Constantinople are still vivid. The keeper of the famous British Cemetery at Skutari, Sergeant Lyne, was one of those who as wounded men were under her care. He tells the story of how sick and wounded lay in long rows, feet to feet, in the great room ot the Selimie barracks at Scutari, and how in the dead of night he had seen Florence Nightingale passing along the corridors on her mission of mercy. The barracks in question were the chief scene of her labours, and not, as is often said, the hospital which is immediately behind the British Cemetery. The struggle which Florence Nightingale had to contend with was with a number of officers, medical ones included, who resented the introduction of women into what they regarded as their own department. But by her persistent energy, her gentle but never-failing devotion to her duty—sometimes, indeed, working for eighteen hours in the day—she overcame all opposition, and was accorded a willing supremacy.

The slight, delicate figure, moving so indefatigably down the long lines of sick and wounded men, carrying in her hands a lamp by which she could find her way and the sick men could see her, made a deep impression on all. It was of “ the lady with the lamp” that a private soldier wrote to The Times with the now famous expression, <l We could kiss her shadow as she passes.” The incident has been immortalised by Longfellow in a poem called “Filomena.” Americans no less than Englishmen glory in her great work, and in the great hall of Cornell University, at Washington, is a beautiful window dedicated to Sancta Floreutia.

Nor, indeed, are other nations lacking in appreciation of our gentle and most noble type of nineteenth century womanhood. A German medical friend was witness of the following: His colleagues in Germany gave a dinner to Lord Lister, and were deservedly loud in their praises of the services rendered by our countryman in the diminution of human suffering, and especially in the reform of hospital practice. One speaker, however, arose, and declared that while he yielded to no one in appreciating Lord Lister’s services, he called to them that the glory of inaugurating hospital nursing and practice belonged to the never-to-be-forgotten Englishwoman, Florence Nightingale. The whole audience applauded the sentiment, and made it evident that the name of Sancta Floreutia was dear to German hearts.

In Constantinople, Sir Robert Rawlinson’s name is always associated as that of a worker with Florence Nightingale. To the end of his days he always spoke of her as at once the most practical worker and the most kindly disposed he had ever known. The generation on the Bosphorus which remembers the Crimean War is fast passing away, but Turk and Englishman, Moslem and Christian, have kept up a tradition of the great English nurse, who, in the midst of the mismanagement and misery of that war, gave hope to thousands.