Page:A short history of nursing - Lavinia L Dock (1920).djvu/139

Florence Nightingale 123 to Sidney Herbert reams of fearless and unsparing criticism, accompanied in every case by construc- tive recommendations. Under her untiring energy, the death rate fell to one never known in the army even in peace times, to twenty-two per thousand from over forty per cent. What she learned then of war office methods gave her weapons for the subsequent contest which she carried on with that department of government. During her stay in the Crimea she established, besides the nursing service, laundries and diet kitchens; brought about the installa- g^^.^j tion of extensive sanitary engineering service works; provided supplies of every kind, ^°'*^®*^°^y — clothing, food, equipment, and surgical dressings for the patients and the nurses, whenever the army system failed to do so, which at first was almost always; — interested herself in the medical department, procured equipment for a laboratory, and was chiefly instrumental in bringing about an army medical school. When the first desperate rush of nursing organization was over Miss Night- ingale initiated for the first time in any army all those numerous activities designed to cheer and help the individual soldier, which have been so marked a feature of the late war. She was the first Red Cross and the first War Camp Commun-