BEFORE THE DAYS OF THE RED CROSS
Do you suppose that people always felt that they should help everybody in such ways?
No; the Red Cross is not yet sixty years old.
War is thousands of years old.
In olden days when soldiers fought, there were no kind Red Cross nurses to care for the wounded. There were no faithful Red Cross dogs to search for wounded soldiers after the battle was over.
Often the suffering men died of neglect when proper nursing would have saved their lives. But no one ever thought of sending a band of women nurses to wars to help the soldiers, before the days of Florence Nightingale.
Florence Nightingale
Florence was a little English girl who always said that when she grew up she would be a nurse.
She felt sorry to see any living creature suffer and always tried to help it. Sometimes it was a bird with a broken wing or an injured rabbit that she tended.
All the neighbors brought their sick pets to her. The little nurse finally had so many patients that her father gave her a corner of the greenhouse for a hospital. The animals learned to love her and she had many friends among them as you may imagine.
When she was a young woman nursing in a London hospital, England’s soldiers were sent to war with Russia’s soldiers. They had to travel in ships all the way to the Crimea in Russia. You see, they were a great distance from home.
News of their terrible sufferings reached Florence Nightingale in the hospital. Taking a band of nurses with her she went to nurse the wounded soldiers in that far off land.
When the nurses arrived there, they found thousands of sick and wounded men lying on the hospital floors with no one to help them. At once the brave nurses began to take care of the soldiers as kindly as your mother takes care of you when you are ill.
Do you wonder that many who would have died, lived and were grateful all their lives to he nurses?
Of course there were no gas or electric lights in the rough hospitals of those days, so that Miss Nightingale always carried a lighted lamp when she made her good-night rounds. The weary soldiers looked for the gleam of the lamp in the darkness and were made happy by her words of encouragement. That is how she came to be called “The Lady of the Lamp.”
The story of Florence Nightingale and her brave band spread far and near. It touched the hearts of people everywhere, and made them think about what could be done to relieve suffering even before the days of the Red Cross.