2-914-076 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The New Barrack-Hospital, at Scutari, 1854. Crimean War. Letter to the British government from one of Florence Nightingale's nurses asking for supplies: '[I] ask you at once to send us wine, or anything which would be useful for the wounded or dying...There are fifty nurses, all of them exceedingly skilful, and we find our efforts so appreciated by the soldiers as well as by the medical officers, that there is hope that the experiment...of sending women out to do the part which God so evidently assigned to them will be blessed...[The nurses' tasks were] assisting the surgeons, when we could, in dressing [the] ghastly wounds, and seeing the poor fellows made as easy as their circumstances would admit of...Wine would be of immense service to some of the nurses just before going into the wards...Warm clothing too...for the convalescents, now the winter is so fast advancing, would be thankfully received'. From "Illustrated London News", 1854.