Early studio photograph of Florence Nightingale
There are a number of commemorations of nurses and the nursing profession in the month of August. Before the month is out, I am offering this article, which I wrote and compiled several years ago, for a progressive, faith-based community. So feel free to skip the devotional part at the end, if it’s “not your cup of tea,” to use an expression Florence probably knew. If you enjoy American poets, you might want to check out Longfellow’s poem to “Santa Filomena,” though.
It has been very moving to read the Kos accounts of ER nurses running for office; responding in Charlottesville, and so many other places; and in the Resistance/Persistence to GoP zombie Don’tCare. This is posted in honor of YOU, and in gratitude for my big sister and her presence in my life when I was very young. Thank you.
Florence Nightingale, Mary Seacole, and Clara Maass: Healers, Scientists, and Nurses
“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
On May 12th in 1820, Florence Nightingale was born into a life of wealth and privilege. Her mother was an outspoken abolitionist. Her father was known as a progressive and a strong advocate for education and improvement in the status of women – particularly in regard to his own daughters.
Florence and her sister, Parthenope, received the best quality education available at that time. Reaching beyond the usual courses in household management and social refinements that prepared well-bred young ladies to be attractive wives for aristocratic husbands, Florence studied Greek, Latin, history, and mathematics, and was tutored by James Sylvester, a noted mathematician and developer of matrix theory.
James Sylvester was a young scholar at this time, and he was Jewish, in a time and place where that meant he was closed off from opportunities that would have been available to other young mathematicians. Tutoring Florence Nightingale must have been a good source of financial support. As a woman, Florence was also excluded from the halls of academic institutions, so she required a private tutor in order to continue her studies. So, out on the edges of the academic establishment, the teacher and the student did their work.
In a family wealthy enough to enjoy many trips abroad, Florence had been named for the city where she was born. On these trips to the European Continent and beyond, Florence observed the cleanliness and healthier conditions in the hospitals that were run by religious communities of women. On a trip to Egypt with family friends in 1849, she was deeply inspired by the example of two Sisters of St. Vincent de Paul whom she came to know.
Her family did not welcome the news when she told them that she wanted to be a nurse. In fact, they were shocked and horrified. In Britain during the early nineteenth century, nursing was done by untrained and socially marginal women with no other source of income, who were often considered to be more-or-less retired prostitutes. This was no environment for a proper young lady!
But Florence was resolved, and despite their dismay, her family did not prevent her from going to Kaiserswerth, in Germany, to study nursing with a Lutheran order of deaconesses. After her return to London, she became the unpaid superintendent of an “establishment for gentlewomen during illness.”
In her work, Florence dedicated attention to improving sanitary conditions in hospitals, defining professional standards for the practice of nursing, and applying the latest scientific findings and medical research to the management of hospitals. Before Florence began her work, hospitals were festering places where the desperately sick came to die – patients rarely came home from the hospital. Florence and the women she trained as nurses were able to send many patients home. Their reputation as healers drew the respect of the British Secretary of War, Sidney Herbert. When British forces entered the Crimean War in 1854, he requested that Florence and 38 of her nursing staff travel to the Crimea, to improve the desperate conditions in the huge British military hospital at Scutari.
British military policy would not permit Florence Nightingale to formally accept the application for service from Mary Seacole, who asked to go along. A widowed Jamaican healer, known for her ability to treat cholera, she formulated and sold her own medicines and herbal remedies, which she had learned about and researched during years of extensive travel throughout the Caribbean region. As a successful entrepreneur, when she was officially denied the opportunity to serve, Mary Seacole paid her own way to the Crimea, and became a valued colleague at the front. She was especially celebrated as a field nurse, exhibiting exceptional bravery during the Battle of Sebastopol, leading two mules loaded with supplies around the battlefield, and was known for her effectiveness as a hands-on, bedside nurse. .
Mary Seacole is considered a very significant role model and shero for black nurses. She is sometimes called the “Black Nightingale,” which is what the soldiers on the battlefield called her. It is unfortunate that the media did not see fit to tell her story as widely as they told about Florence; but there were articles about her in Punch and the London Times; she was invited to meet with Queen Victoria; and her autobiography, the Wonderful Adventures of Mrs. Seacole in Many Lands, published in 1855, was very popular, giving her a comfortable retirement.
During the past thirty years, with the growing awareness of the significance of black history and women’s history, many historians have helped to revive her memory and rescue it from the racism of what is remembered and recalled.
It is hard to avoid comparing her story to that of Florence Nightingale, and it is frustrating to see how the memory of Mary Seacole faded from history while Florence Nightingale’s was preserved (though it should be noted that Florence Nightingale’s reputation as a gifted mathematician faded from the history books, in favor of her image as a dedicated nurse). Here is what Helen J. Seaton, a biographer of Mary Seacole, has to say about the comparison:
“The manner of their service was drastically different. Even before she went to the Crimea, Nightingale knew that surmounting the bureaucratic problems of the army's medical services and establishing a female nursing group which authorities and medical men alike could respect was going to be more important than any individual patient care she might do.
Nightingale gained her reputation by the organization of nursing services during the Crimean War. After the war she worked tirelessly to improve public health and raise the status of nursing. The result of the introduction of women nurses into the British Army was no small matter in the history of nursing and was a testimony to her tremendous public support in forcing the antagonistic military hierarchy to accept a female with authority into their ranks.
She also experienced prejudice and resentment from doctors and the military establishment. Nightingale is being criticized for not doing more, for not being more progressive, etc. but she took on the establishment years before women could even vote.
Mrs. Seacole's strengths seemed to be more in hands-on activities such as direct patient care. She was an entrepreneur who was able to use her skills as a merchant to finance her medical and nursing practice. It is probably true that Mrs. Seacole had more practical experience, especially with tropical diseases.
However, both administrative and hands-on care are necessary for the effective delivery of health care. Both women made a great contribution to the history of nursing in their own way and, hopefully, there is room for both of them.”
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/crimea/seacole.html
Period photograph of Mary Seacole
Born 1805 (date uncertain)
Died May 14, 1881
The arrival of the nurses in the military camp was not warmly welcomed. The officials in charge of the hospital understood that this was a reflection on their poor performance and corruption. Corruption and breakdowns in the long supply line from Britain resulted in shortages of every necessity, contamination of supplies, and malnutrition for the troops.
Florence and her staff of nursing volunteers were subjected to all sorts of sabotage and harassment. She established a rule, that she, herself, would be the only woman to take night duty in the wards, because it was not safe. After eight o’clock in the evening, orderlies would replace the nurses, for their safety. While this protected them from personal assault, it could not protect them from contracting the diseases around them. Three of the nurses and eight doctors in the hospital died from typhus and cholera. Florence herself became terribly ill for several months.
Florence earned the love, respect, and admiration of the soldiers in her care. Some told of how she looked like an angel to them, as she carried a glowing candle between the rows of cots on night rounds through the wards. They called her the “Lady With a Lamp.” She is most famous for her courage in this terrible situation.
Ultimately, the Crimean War set the stage for World War One. In the years after the Crimean War, it became known as “Britain in Blunderland.” It began partly on religious pretexts, relating to the Sultan’s bargaining back and forth between Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox countries, for jurisdiction over the Christian pilgrimage sites in Jerusalem. Britain became locked into a “quagmire” of colonial conflict, economic competition, and attempts at containment, involving Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Turkish Ottoman Empire.
One of the most famous and tragic blunders was the disastrous Battle of Balaclava, which later became the subject of Alfred Lord Tennyson’s poem: “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” This and many other disasters resulted from inexperience, unclear orders, and unquestioned orders. The rank-and-file soldiers were bearing the brunt of furious battles, with little hope of a way out.
Technologies like the telegraph meant that battlefield reports by journalists were reaching the newspapers back home in England with much more immediacy, and public anger about the conditions the troops were being forced to endure was on the rise. Resistance to the war increased as the incompetence, neglect, and disorganization with which it was being conducted grew more and more evident, and the wasting of Britain’s fine troops became undeniable.
The story of Florence Nightingale and the nurses was irresistible for reporters. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow wrote a poem about her ministry of healing, titled “Santa Filomena.” Florence Nightingale was becoming a popular figure in England and the United States. But this fame could do nothing to immediately alleviate the horror of Scutari.
Sanitary conditions were such that more soldiers were dying from preventable illnesses than from the violence. Florence set out to convince the British military authorities of the need for dramatic reforms in the hospitals. There were limits to what she could do about deaths on the battlefield, even with the courage and expertise of Mary Seacole to rely on; but Florence knew she could prevent many needless deaths from infectious disease. However, she needed evidence with which to convince the military establishment that they must take her call for reforms seriously.
Best known as the founder of the modern nursing profession, Florence Nightingale is also remembered as an accomplished mathematician. In the hospital at Scutari, she pioneered in the field of statistical analysis, collecting and assimilating data that helped to track, predict, and prevent the incidence of non-battlefield deaths from disease and infection. Florence Nightingale invented the polar-area diagram, a type of sophisticated “pie chart” that is able to express a variety of phenomena in relationship and interaction with each other.
Following the Battle of Sebastopol in the winter of 1855, the hospital fatality rate climbed to 42%. After six months of the nurses’ labor, the fatality rate had dropped to 2%.
The marked improvement in the recovery rate for injured soldiers, and the evidence that she compiled did prove convincing to military officials, and Florence Nightingale came home to England a national hero, though she denied public honors for herself. Continuing her campaign for reform in civilian hospitals, she developed a “Model Hospital Statistical Form” to help hospitals collect and analyze information, in order to identify problems before they became fatal.
For most of the remainder of her long life, she lived quietly. The effects of the fevers she survived in the Crimea had long-term consequences for her health and energy. Nevertheless, she became a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society and the American Statistical Association. She continued to consult with military medical authorities working for reforms and improvements in many conflicts, including advising the Union Army Medical Corps during the American Civil War, and with New Jersey’s Clara Barton in the founding of the Red Cross.
The great mathematician Karl Pearson, who was a profound influence on Albert Einstein, recognized Florence Nightingale as a “prophetess” in the development of the field of applied statistics. She became the recipient of many medals and honors, but continued to turn down much of the recognition that came her way. She wanted to draw attention instead to the importance of the nursing profession.
By the time she passed away at the age of ninety, on August 13, 1910, Florence Nightingale had opened a vitally important profession to women and had inspired and influenced the lives of millions of people. Her legacy endures as an inspiration to medical professionals all over the world; and the relevance of her prophetic call for continuous reform in health care systems and health care delivery carries tremendous contemporary resonance for our era.
This portrait drawing of Florence Nightingale depicts her in a long tradition: portraits of women who are quietly reading. Dating back to illuminated manuscripts of the Medieval period, such portraits were strong statements about the importance of educating women – it was very rare for women to be literate in the Middle Ages. Often these depictions are titled with the name of Mary Magdalene; or Mary of Bethany, whom Jesus described as choosing the “better part” of study and contemplation; or Mary, the Mother of Jesus, reading the Scriptures, or from a prayer book
This image of a woman reading grew more prominent after the Reformation, when reading the Scripture became emphasized for all the faithful – including women. By the Nineteenth century, this image also evoked Martha, the sister of Mary and Lazarus; the model of stewardship, hospitality, and household management, as women were expanding and redefining their roles in society with a new quality of self-respect.
Right into our times, international aid workers in developing countries report that educating women – teaching and encouraging them to read -- is the most directly tangible factor in creating visible economic improvement and community well-being in impoverished societies.
“Educate a woman and you educate a Nation.”
Portrait of Florence Nightingale.
Illustration from Eminent Women of the Age, 1868.
“And so is the world put back by the death of every one who has to sacrifice the development of his or her peculiar gifts (which were meant, not for selfish gratification, but for the improvement of that world) to conventionality.” (1852)
“For what is Mysticism? Is it not the attempt to draw near to God, not by rites or ceremonies, but by inward disposition? Is it not merely a hard word for 'The Kingdom of Heaven is within'? Heaven is neither a place nor a time.” (1873)
http://womenshistory.about.com/cs/quotes/a/qu_nightingale.htm
Santa Filomena
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow: 1857
Whene'er a noble deed is wrought,
Whene'er is spoken a noble thought,
Our hearts, in glad surprise,
To higher levels rise.
The tidal wave of deeper souls
Into our inmost being rolls,
And lifts us unawares
Out of all meaner cares.
Honour to those whose words or deeds
Thus help us in our daily needs,
And by their overflow
Raise us from what is low!
Thus thought I, as by night I read
Of the great army of the dead,
The trenches cold and damp,
The starved and frozen camp, --
The wounded from the battle-plain,
In dreary hospitals of pain,
The cheerless corridors,
The cold and stony floors.
Lo! in that house of misery
A lady with a lamp I see
Pass through the glimmering gloom,
And flit from room to room.
And slow, as in a dream of bliss,
The speechless sufferer turns to kiss
Her shadow, as it falls
Upon the darkening walls.
As if a door in heaven should be
Opened, and then closed suddenly,
The vision came and went,
The light shone was spent.
On England's annals, through the long
Hereafter of her speech and song,
That light its rays shall cast
From portals of the past.
A lady with a lamp shall stand
In the great history of the land,
A noble type of good,
Heroic womanhood.
Nor even shall be wanting here
The palm, the lily, and the spear,
The symbols that of yore
Saint Filomena bore.
In May of 1802, a stone sarcophagus was discovered at an archeological excavation in the Roman catacombs. It was from the period of the Emperor Diocletian, a persecutor of the early Christian community. Containing the remains of a very young woman, it was inscribed with the name “Philomena,” Greek for “Beloved.”
Carved with the symbols of the palm and the lily, it indicated that a virgin martyr was inside. The sarcophagus also depicted an anchor, a symbol of faith; and a sword with arrows, indicating the method by which she was executed.
Called the “Daughter of Light,” this discovery captured the Romantic popular imagination during the Nineteenth century, and several devotional traditions sprang up around the image of St. Philomena, or Filomena, who came to be called the “Wonder Worker” for many miracles and healings that were attributed to her help.
Her commemoration day is August 10th (close to that of Florence Nightingale and Clara Maas). Much was made in popular devotions of the discovery of the remains of St. Filomena at the start of the new century, as though sent from the earliest Christian community to be a messenger of the Good News to the modernizing and industrializing world, resurrected from the oblivion of history.
Longfellow chose to evoke the image of St. Filomena in his poetic tribute to Florence Nightingale, to convey popular ideas about the purity of her purpose, and the clarity of her witness, in a corrupt and confusing time.
While so little is known about Philomena/Filomena that she was removed from the list of official church saints by Pope John XXIII, devotional practices are still permitted in her honor, as a patron saint of desperate circumstances.
Clara Louise Maass,
June 28th, 1876 to August 24th, 1901
Born on June 28th, 1876, in East Orange, New Jersey, Clara was the eldest daughter of German Lutheran immigrants, Hedwig and Robert Maass. During her childhood, she took care of her nine younger siblings, then worked as a mother’s helper, and later worked in an orphanage.
Clara Maass became one of the first graduates of Newark German Hospital's Christina Trefz Training School for Nurses in 1895. She was 19 years old. By 1898, at the age of 22, she had been promoted to head nurse at Newark German Hospital where she was known for her hard work and dedication to her profession. She strove to live up to the model of Florence Nightingale and the pioneering generation of women in nursing professions in the generation before.
The decades after the Civil War in the United States had been a time of massive industrialization and expansion. The U.S. was emerging as a new power on the world stage, beginning to see itself as a new kind of empire, and bumping up against the colonial territory of old empires, like Spain. This was pulling the United States into a deeper involvement in Cuba, where a power vacuum had formed out of civil war between Spanish loyalists to the colonial regime, and “insurgents” who wanted Cuban independence.
In the U.S., economic conditions following a terrible depression and nationwide labor unrest, and the energy building up -- decades after the Civil War -- to unify North and South against a common enemy, fueled the impulse to go to war.
A strong resistance to war might have prevailed. Those who were pressing for war were in the minority. Then, on February 15th, 1898, the Battleship Maine exploded in Havana Harbor, killing 266 men, with an inconclusive investigation as to the cause. Spain, or Cuban colonial agents of Spain, was suspected.
The newly corporatized and commercialized big newspapers, lead by the tycoon, William Randolph Hearst, were marketing “yellow journalism,” hyped up with scandal, sensation, and fear-mongering. Photographs of the wreckage in Havana Harbor, and the slogan: “Remember the Maine!” were all over the papers. A memorial plaque made from part of the melted and recast iron hull of the ship was installed at the Beaux Arts landmark City Hall building in Jersey City, and is still there. Other memorials were also placed in many towns and cities across the country.
The Spanish-American War marked the first use of modern propaganda techniques to draw the American people into a war overseas. Historians in the post-Viet Nam era point suspiciously to the many aspects of the Maine that bear similar marks as the Gulf of Tonkin incident, the Bay of Pigs, and other covert “special operations.”
At any rate, the Maine incident provided an effective pretext to ramp up the industrial war machine, and the United States launched on a history of empire building that ultimately led through Viet Nam into the quagmire of Iraq and the problem of Guantanamo.
But the young people who were responding to the call for service could not have known what the consequences of the war would be like. In.April 1898, Maass volunteered as a nurse for the United States Army. The Army Nurse Corps did not yet exist; nurses were signed on as contractors. She served with the Seventh U. S. Army Corps from October 1, 1898 to February 5, 1899 in Jacksonville, Florida, Savannah, Georgia, and Santiago, Cuba. She was discharged in 1899, but then volunteered again with the Eighth U.S. Army Corps in the Philippines from November 1899 to the middle of the year 1900.
During her army service, she saw few battle injuries, instead caring mostly for soldiers suffering from infectious diseases like typhoid, malaria, dengue and yellow fever. She contracted dengue in Manila and was sent home.
Yellow fever studies
Shortly after finishing her second assignment with the army, Maass returned to Cuba in October 1900 after being summoned by William Gorgas, who was working with the U.S. Army's Yellow Fever Commission. The commission, headed by Major Walter Reed, was established during the post-war occupation of Cuba in order to investigate yellow fever, which was endemic in Cuba.
One of the commission's goals was to determine how the disease was spread: by mosquito bites or by contact with contaminated objects. The commission recruited human subjects because they did not know of any animals that could contract yellow fever.
In the first recorded instance of informed consent in human experiments, volunteers were told that participation in the studies might cause their deaths.
As an incentive, volunteers were paid one hundred dollars, which was a large amount at the time, with an additional $100 if the volunteer became ill.
In March 1901, Maass volunteered to be bitten by a Culex fasciata mosquito (now called Aedes aegypti) that had been allowed to feed on yellow fever patients. She contracted a mild case of the disease from which she quickly recovered.
By this time, the researchers were certain that mosquitoes were the route of transmission, but lacked the scientific evidence to prove it because some volunteers who were bitten remained healthy.
On August 14, 1901, Maass allowed herself to be bitten by infected mosquitoes once more. The researchers were hoping to show that her earlier case of yellow fever was sufficient to immunize her against the disease.
Unfortunately, this was not the case. Maass once again became ill with yellow fever on August 18 and died on August 24. Her death roused public sentiment and put an end to yellow fever experiments on humans.
Maass was buried in Colon Cemetery in Havana with military honors. Her body was moved to Fairmount Cemetery, Newark, New Jersey, on February 20, 1902.
Tributes
A 13¢ US postage stamp in Maass' honor.
The caption reads "She gave her life."
- In 1951, the 50th anniversary of her death, Cuba issued a postage stamp in her honor.
- On June 19, 1952, Newark German Hospital (which had since moved to Belleville, New Jersey) was renamed Clara Maass Memorial Hospital.
- In 1976, the 100th anniversary of her birth, Maass was honored with a 13¢ United States commemorative stamp.
- Also in 1976, the American Nurses Association inducted her into its Nursing Hall of Fame. See: en.wikipedia.org/…
Along with Florence Nightingale, Lutherans honor Clara Maas on August 13 as a "Renewer of Society." This commemoration in August invites the church to give thanks for all those who practice the arts of healing, and who give of themselves with the kind of bravery, grace and faithfulness exemplified by these women, by the stories of St. Filomena, and by the life and example of Mary Seacole and so many other courageous and compassionate nurses and people of faith.
*********************************************************************
Prayers for Caregivers, Health Care Providers, and Emergency Workers, adapted from the ELW (Evangelical Lutheran Worship) hymnal and worship resource, p. 85:
God, our Refuge and Strength, our present help in time of trouble, care for those who tend the needs of the sick. Strengthen them in body and spirit. Refresh them when weary; console them when anxious; comfort them in grief; and hearten them in discouragement. Be with us all, and give us peace at all times and in every way.
Merciful God, your healing power is everywhere about us. Strengthen those who work among the sick; give them courage and confidence in all they do. Encourage them even when their efforts seem futile, or when death prevails. Increase their trust in your power even to overcome death and pain and crying. May they be thankful for every sign of health you give, and humble before the Mystery of your healing grace.
God of earth and air, water and fire, height and depth, we pray for those who work in danger, who rush in to bring hope and help and comfort when others flee to safety; whose mission is to seek and save, serve and protect, and whose presence embodies the protection of the Good Shepherd. Give them caution and concern for one another, so that in safety they may do what must be done, under your watchful eye. Support them in their courage and dedication that they may continue to save lives, ease pain, and mend the torn fabric of lives and social order.
A sheet of fund-raiser “Christmas Seals” type of stamps, featuring the image of Clara Maas framed in the laurels of a shero.
The stamp reads: “Nurse Clara Maass, For Science and Humanity, Lutheran Memorial Hospital, Newark, NJ, Christmas, 1949.”
Citations/Sources:
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/crimea/blunder2.html -- On the Crimean War
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/crimea/florrie.html -- Biography of Florence Nightingale
http://www.victorianweb.org/history/crimea/seacole.html -- Biography of Mary Seacole
http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/florence-vs-mary-the-big-nurse-off-a7100676.html — article on the debate over a statue of Mary Seacole at a hospital in Britain.
https://www.thoughtco.com/florence-nightingale-quotes-3525402
http://www.agnesscott.edu/Lriddle/WOMEN/nitegale.htm --Biographies of Women Mathematicians article on Florence Nightingale’s accomplishments in applied statistics.
http://www.gettyimages.com/pictures/florence-nightingale-182448#the-nurse-and-hospital-reformer-florence-nightingale-in-old-age-she-picture-id613476364
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=98
http://www.philomena.us/main.asp -- The Sanctuary of St. Philomena
https://philomena.us/history-saint-philomena/ -- The History of St. Philomena
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clara_Maass -- Article on Clara Maass
http://www.aahn.org/gravesites/maass.html Biography of Clara Maass, American Association for the History of Nursing
https://newarksattic.blog/2015/07/22/clara-maass-and-the-newark-german-hospital/
A 19th-century drawing of Saint Philomena, showing her attributes, an anchor, a sword, and 3 arrows, symbols found on her sarcophagus at the archeological site in Italy where her tomb was discovered.
While so little is known about her that she was removed from the list of official church saints by Pope John XXIII, devotional practices are still permitted in her honor, as a patron saint of desperate circumstances. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow referred to her in his poetic ode to Florence Nightingale, “Santa Filomena.”
