05-12 TABLE of CONTENTS:
Florence Nightingale
DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and
EVENTS
QUOTE by
Florence Nightingale.
Florence Nightingale
One of the first things Florence Nightingale did
when she arrived at the British hospital in the Crimea where wounded soldiers
war were dying at a rate of 40% was to order 200 scrub brushes.
The doctors and army officers in charge of the facility
were allowing rats, fleas, and filth to kill their wounded men - as they
had in wars immemorial.
She didn't know what was worse, fighting the dirt
and filth or fighting the generals and men doctors who so disliked a woman
telling them what to do.
The Crimea was was one of the first times that women
were allowed any authority as hospitals and what a difference it made!
Florence Nighingale who got her nickname as "The
Lady of the Lamp" for her nightly walks through the wards as she personally
checked on every patient had dropped the mortality rate of the wounded
from 40% to an astounding 2%.
All during her stay, Generals and other officers and
doctors tried desperately to remove her but she prevailed with the help
of Queen Victoria who could reach statistics without a male ego getting
into the way.
Later, back in London (she returned secretly to avoid
the huge welcoming parade planned for her) she established the Nightingale
School for Nurses, the first professional nursing school in the world.
Through reading she became an expert on public health
and care and when Britain invaded India she became the recognized expert
on that country and supervised its nursing - while staying home.
She constantly fought distractions heaped on her by
an adoring public and officials that she felt distracted her from her main
work.
For years she conducted a huge correspondence from
her couch; her retreat into invalidism is seen as a way to keep people
at a distance. In 1907 she became the first and only woman awarded the
British Order of Merit established to honor eminent men AND women. By her
orders, she did not have a state funeral. Florence Nightingale the founder
of modern nursing who saved millions of lives.
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05-12 DATES, ANNIVERSARIES, and EVENTS
B. 05-12-1842, Maria Konopnicka, one of the most important Polish
authors and poets. She was a tireless worker for women's suffrage and
their right to education.
MK had, in the ways of the times, married an older
man and had six children. She fled him because of his overbearing meanness
and abuse, settling in Warsaw.
She denounced the Catholic Church's rules about women,
marriage, and the lower classes.
B. 05-12-1857, Lillian Nordica, U.S. soprano whose full, rich
voice teamed with her striking stage presence tp dominate the Wagnerian
stage.
B. 05-12-1883, Hazel Lucile Harrison, Afro-American concert pianist
who made her debut with the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra in 1904. She
was blocked from concerts with major American orchestras because of her
race AND sex.
Her technique and ability was praised for years in
Europe.
Her mother, a hairdresser and manicurist , was the
daughter of slaves who followed the underground railway to the north.
B. 05-12-1893, Georgia Lee Witt Lusk, educator, state government
official, and congressional representative is known as the first lady of
New Mexico.
In 1924 she was elected superintendent of schools
in her home county and elected superintendent of public instruction for
the state 1930.
She moved on to the U.S. Congress in 1946, and was
a member of the War Claims Commission (1949-1953).
GLW was instrumental in getting free textbooks in
all the New Mexico school.
B. 05-12-1900, Mildred H. McAfee, at 36 became the seventh president
of Wellesley College (1936- 1949). She was granted a leave to act as
director of the WAVES (1942-46).
B. 05-12-1916, Julia E. Hamblet who became Director of the Women's
Corps of the U.S. Marines in 1953.
B. 05-12-1910, Dorothy (Mary) Crowfoot Hodgkin, British chemist
won 1964 Nobel Prize for Chemistry for determining the atomic structure
of vitamin B-12.
She also determined the structure of insulin and penicillin.
With an amazing mind and sense of reasoning, she was a noted exponent of
experimental physics. DCH developed a method of passing x-rays through
crystals to show their molecular structure. The only other woman to win
the Nobel in Chemistry was Marie Sklodowska Curie, who won her second
Nobel in 1911.
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QUOTES DU JOUR
NIGHTINGALE, FLORENCE:
"No man, not even a
doctor, ever gives any other definition of what a nurse should be than
this -- `devoted and obedient.' This definition would do just as well for
a porter. It might even do for a horse. It would not do for a policeman."
-- Florence Nightingale,
1859.
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