1 janv. 1854 - Florence Nightingale: Developments in Nursing

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Florence Nightingale brought a new discipline and professionalism to nursing, which had a very bad reputation during the 1800s. Many nurses were old pauper women who were drunk and uncaring with very little medical training. Some treated their patients badly, and others were even prostitutes. Hospitals involved unclean, cramped, stuffy wards that spread infection quickly and had poor sewerage systems. If patients did not die from the disease they had, they were likely to die from one they caught on the wards.

Despite opposition from her family, Nightingale studied to become a nurse in 1849. In 1851, she went to Germany to work in a hospital for 3 months. When the Crimean War broke out in 1853, Secretary of War Sidney Herbert asked for Nightingale to go to the Barrack Hospital in Scutari and sort out the hospital's nursing care. The military opposed women nurses, as they were considered a distraction and inferior to male nurses; this did not dissuade Florence from going with 38 nurses in 1854. Using methods she had learned from her training in Europe, Nightingale ensured that all the wards were clean and hygienic, that water supplies were adequate, and that patients were fed properly (this practice was founded on her belief in the miasma theory). Regardless, Nightingale greatly improved the hospital, decreasing its death rate from 42% to just 2%.

After she returned to Britain in 1856, Nightingale made 2 major contributions to medicine: establishing nursing as a proper profession, and suggesting ways in which hospitals could be better maintained. The public raised £44,000 to set up the Nightingale School of Nursing at St. Thomas' Hospital in London. Nurses were given 3 years of training before they could qualify; discipline and observation were crucial. In 1859 she published her book Notes on Nursing, and in 1863 Notes on Hospitals, explaining her methods and emphasising the need for hygiene and a professional attitude. They were the standard textbooks for generations of nurses.

By 1900 there were 64,000 trained nurses in Britain from colleges across the country. The 1800s also saw a massive increase in hospital building, as hospitals became cleaner and more specialist.

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