A QUEEN AMONGST WOMEN.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9091, 16 May 1908, Page 4

A QUEEN AMONGST WOMEN.

Yesterday one of the queens of Great Britain —one of the real queens of history—queen in the truest Ruskin sense —entered upon her eighty-ninth year, and will doubtless be the recipient of congratulations ail parts of the world. We allude to . Miss Florence Nightingale— queen among nurses as well as queen among women—the greatest nursing organiser in history. Her history so far as it mainly concerns the world, commenced with the progress of the Crimean war, though many years before that date—in 1844—she took up the study of nursing and interested herself in the condition of civil and military hospitals. In 1851 Miss Night ingale, when 31 years of age, went into training as a nurse in the insti- , tution of the Protestant Deaconesses at Kaiserswerth on the Rhine, x and studied with the Sisters of Sc. Vincent de Paul in Paris the system of nursing and management carried out in the hospitals of that city. On her return to England she put into thorough working order the Sanatorium • for Governesses in Harley street. Thus this noble woman had spent ten years of apprenticeship to the great , work she was shortly to be called upon to undertake. In the spring of 1854 war was declared with Russia; Alma was fought on the 20th of , September, and the wounded from the battle were sent down to the hospitals on the Bosphorus, which were soon crowded with sick and wounded, their unhealthy condition becoming apparent in a rate of mortality to which the casualties of the fiercest battle were as nothing. In this crisis the one woman in all Britain capable of bringing order out of chaos in the hospitals of Scutari wrote to Lord Herbert, Seoretary-at-War, offering to go out and organise a nursing department there. By a singular coincidence, Lord Herbert ha 1 about the same time, written to Miss Nightingale "requesting " her to go, and the letters crossed each other. The offer was gladly accepted, and on October 21st Miss Nightingale set out with thirty-four heroic nurses to perform the noblest task that ever falls to the lot of woman—the succouring of the sick and afflicted. She arrived at Constantinople on the 4th November, the eve of Inkcrman—the beginning of that terrible wincer campaign—in time to receive the wounded from that second battle into wards already filled with 2,300 patients. The wounded poured in wich terrible rapidity, and fever added to the list of sufferers. There was no organisation, no adequate provision for sick or wounded, and the commissariat had broken down. There were no medical comforts, no hospital accessories, no proper food, no change of clothing. It was an awful task this intrepid woman iiad to face, but she faced and overcame it, and in doing so won the love of thousands of patients and the esteem of the whnle c'vilised world. She became a martyr to duty, and has received on earth a crown of glory such as perhaps has fallen to the lot of no other woman. Her devotion to the sufferer.-* can never be forgotten. She would stand twenty houz's on a stretch in order to see the patients provided with accommodation, and all the requisites of their condition, and a few months after her arrival she had ten thousand sick and wounded under her care. She saw clearly in the bad sanitary arrangements of the hospital-i thi causes of their frightful mortal it}, and her incessant labour was devoted to the removal of these causes as well as the mitigation of their effects. In the spring of 1555 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 in July 1850. She, to whom so many soldiers owed life an] health, had expended her own health in the physical and mental strain to which she had subjected herself. Her life since her return to England has been spent in continuing the good work in the cause of her suffering fellow creatures, and the nation's tribute of £50,000 has been spent in training a superior order of

nurses in connection with the Nightingale Home. In her eighty-ninth year we, in common with the rest of the civilised world, say "God bless her," and hope that she may yet be spared many years in the full enjoyment of her intellect to do true queenly service in the cause of her fellow creatures.

The Council of the Masterton Chamber of Commerce has at length decided that it is time to make a decided move in connection with the projected Masterton - Waipukurau railway. The battle of the starting point and terminus has commenced in earnest, and unless some clear understanding is arrived at the Minister is likely to use the fact of indecision as an excuse for hanging up the mr.tior. The natural' head-centre is Masterton, and this may easily be demonstrated. The local Chamber of Commerce has decided to communicate with the Waipukurau branch of the league to secure its co-operation in a deputation to the Minister of Railways, to urge upon him to hava the line constructed between Masterton and Waipukurau, and it is to be hoped the response will be cordial and prove effective.