November 4, 1854 · Balkans Theater
November 4, 1854
Florence Nightingale arrived at the Barrack Hospital at Scutari, across the Bosphorus from Constantinople, on November 4, 1854, with thirty-eight nurses. She found conditions of almost unimaginable horror: wards flooded with raw sewage, rodents everywhere, no soap, no clean linen, inadequate food and water, and a death rate exceeding 40 percent. Army medical authorities initially refused her help, insisting conditions were adequate.
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