Florence Nightingale

When Florence Nightingale was a child, she pretended her dolls were sick and needed to be mended by her tender hand. Her first live patient was a dog named Cap, suffering from a broken leg after boys threw stones at him. Its owner planned to put the dog down that night, much to Florence’s shock. She refused to leave Cap and knelt in the mud, caressing the dog and comforting it in its misery. After further examination, the leg was found to be injured, but not broken, and so Florence learned from a pastor friend how to put a compress on Cap’s leg, helping the dog get back on its feet. She’d rescued Cap.   

As an adult, she wanted a life that could be devoted to a great work. Enrolling herself at the Deaconess Institution in Germany, she became a trained nurse, beginning her journey in changing the medical profession in ways that still affect the modern-day medicine. 

In 1854, after Russia’s invasion of Moldavia and modern-day Romania, the Crimean War started. An alliance between Britain, France, Turkey, and Sardinia formed to aid the Ottoman Empire to stop Russia from expanding in the Near East.   

As battles raged, the military hospital in Scutari, Turkey, became overrun. Supplies like bed sheets were low, and the staff overwhelmed. Some men went untreated for weeks. The fortunate few who managed to make it to the hospital were covered in dirt, blood, and lice. The first battle resulted in the beginning of a long siege, and word of the British wounded having no medical help was reported. The French had Sisters of Charity to nurse the troops. The government in England called on Florence Nightingale to take a team of nurses to Turkey to treat the soldiers.  

Serving the Same God 

Florence saw being a nurse as a calling from God—one that she could be used to help people in need. She would lead a team of nurses to go to the hospital in Scutari. With Secretary of War Sidney Herbert’s blessing, the search for her team began. Though she searched all of London and the surrounding areas, good help was hard to find. Many kind-hearted women applied to volunteer, but the urgency at Scutari demanded nurses with education and experience. They were going to a war zone and didn’t have the time to train women who had never been in a hospital before. 

Florence had seen many hospitals in her life, meeting nurses from all parts of the country. In the past, she had learned much about nursing from Catholic nuns and decided to reach out to them for help. Florence was determined to get a variety of nurses to prove that they could all work together for what they had in common—love for God and man. Thirty-eight women were found to go to the Crimea: eight Anglican sisters, twenty lay nurses, and ten Roman Catholic sisters.  On October 21, the nurses set out to the military hospital, ready to do a great work. After their arrival, more nurses were brought in, including fifteen additional nuns. 

Unhappy Protestants complained of having Catholic assistance. One chaplain said that a nurse had denied the Trinity, another  that a nurse was sharing religious books. Complaints piled upon the secretary of war’s desk about the nuns ministering to soldiers, despite the fact that the majority of soldiers at the hospital were Catholic. 

The fact that so many nuns had been allowed to join Florence’s nursing team sent ripples of dismay all the way back to England. “They tell me that there is a religious war about poor me in the Times,” Florence wrote to Secretary Herbert. “I do not know what I have done to be so dragged before the Public. But I am so glad that my God is not the God of the High Church, or of the Low, that He is not a Romanist or an Anglican—or a Unitarian.”   

It became so bad that Florence’s name was tarnished across the country, some saying she had gone to the Crimea not to nurse soldiers, but to spread Catholicism.  One pastor warned his church of sending money to the soldiers, lest the Pope get ahold of it. Newspapers were filled with controversy, and Secretary Herbert and his wife were quick to rise to Florence’s defense.  

She knew that both the Protestant and Catholic nurses served the same God, and despite the religious differences, what brought them together was more important than what separated them. Despite the controversy, which got so bad that even Queen Victoria caught word of it, Florence never wavered in her support for her Catholic nurses, knowing that the Protestants and Catholics could work together for the soldiers under their care. 

“They are the truest Christians I ever met with—invaluable in their work—devoted, heart and head, to serve God and mankind,” Florence wrote about the Catholic nuns. To her, a faith full of service to God and man mattered more than an empty faith. Over time, and as the cries of controversy settled down, Florence kept her focus on what God had called her to do: Save lives;  nurse the wounded; tend to the sick. 

The Protestants and Catholics learned not only to work together, but also that they could get along as brothers and sisters in Christ. Florence’s determination to keep them together for the soldiers’ sake could be summed up by what an Irish pastor once said: “She belongs to a sect which, unfortunately, is a very rare one—the sect of the Good Samaritan.” 

“Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts form one body, so it is with Christ ” (1 Corinthians 12:12 NIV).