This month we would like to pay tribute to all the women in the health care field who are spending exhausting hours every day at work in the midst of this pandemic. (Thanks to the men out there as well, but since this month includes Mother’s Day, it’s the women to whom we want to pay special notice.) In this light, three renowned women pioneers in this field are highlighted herein: Florence Nightingale, Dorothea Dix, and Clara Barton.
Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) was born in Florence, Italy, and is most remembered as a pioneer of nursing and a reformer of hospital sanitation methods. For most of her ninety years, she pushed for reform of the British military healthcare system and deserved respect for the profession of nursing. Unknown to many, however, was her use of new techniques of statistical analysis, such as during the Crimean War when she plotted the incidence of preventable deaths in the military. She developed the “polar-area diagram” to dramatize the needless deaths caused by unsanitary conditions and the need for reform. With her analysis, Nightingale revolutionized the idea that social phenomena could be objectively measured and subjected to mathematical analysis. She was an innovator in the collection, tabulation, interpretation, and graphical display of descriptive statistics.
Nightingale’s two greatest life achievements – pioneering of nursing and the reform of hospitals – were amazing, considering that most Victorian women of her age group did not attend universities or pursue professional careers. It was her father, William Nightingale, who believed women, especially his children, should get an education. So Florence and her sister learned Italian, Latin, Greek, history, and mathematics. She received an excellent early preparation in mathematics from her father and aunt.
In 1854, after a year as an unpaid superintendent of a London “establishment for gentlewomen during illness,” the Secretary of War, Sidney Herbert, recruited Nightingale and 38 nurses for service in Scutari during the Crimean War. During the war, she was most known for her dedication to her patients. She was also instrumental in getting the conditions of the hospital improved. No longer would the wounded die because of unsanitary conditions.
After the war, she set out to establish the first nursing school with money donated to her by her former patients and through charity. This school was established so nurses would have a guide and role model to follow.
In 1907, Nightingale began to go blind and her health gradually failed her. She died on August 13, 1910 in London at age 90. Upon her death, the King offered to give her a national funeral and burial, but it was her wish before she died that no such measures would be taken and that her burial be like anyone else’s.
Dorothea Dix (1802-1887) became the Union’s Superintendent of Female Nurses during the Civil War. A noted social reformer, she had spent more than twenty years working for improved treatment of mentally ill patients and for better prison conditions. A week after the attack on Fort Sumter, Dix, at age 59, volunteered her services to the Union and received the appointment in June 1861 placing her in charge of all women nurses working in army hospitals. Serving in that position without pay through the entire war, Dix quickly molded her vaguely defined duties.
She convinced skeptical military officials, unaccustomed to female nurses, that women could perform the work acceptably, and then recruited women. Battling the prevailing stereotypes, and accepting many of the common prejudices herself, Dix sought to ensure that her ranks not be inundated with flighty and marriage-minded young women by only accepting applicants who were plain-looking and older than 30. In addition, Dix authorized a dress code of modest black or brown skirts and forbade hoops or jewelry.
Even with these strict and arbitrary requirements, relaxed somewhat as the war persisted, a total of over 3,000 women served as Union army nurses. Called “Dragon Dix” by some, the superintendent was stern and brusque, clashing frequently with the military bureaucracy and occasionally ignoring administrative details. Yet, army nursing care was markedly improved under her leadership.
Dix looked after the welfare of both the nurses, who labored in an often brutal environment, and the soldiers to whom they ministered, obtaining medical supplies from private sources when they were not forthcoming from the government. After the war ended, she returned to her work on behalf of the mentally ill.
Clara Barton (1821-1912) was born in North Oxford, Massachusetts as the youngest child of Stephen Barton, a farmer a state legislator who had served in the Revolution under General Anthony Wayne. She later recalled that his tales made war very familiar to her.
Well-spoken and well-read, Clara began teaching at nearby schools when she was 15 years old. After she was invited to teach in a private school in Bordentown, New Jersey, she recognized the community’s need for free education. Despite opposition, she set up one of the first free public schools in the state in 1850. State tradition required paid schooling and thus served few children. She offered to teach without salary if payment were waived. She later took pride in having established the first free school in New Jersey and having raised enrollment in Bordentown from 6 to 600. When town officials decided to appoint a male administrator over her, she resigned. At this time, she suffered her first crisis of a nervous illness, associated in part with uncertainty about her future.
In 1853, she obtained an appointment as copyist in the Patent Office in Washington, D.C., becoming the first woman in America to hold such a government post. She continued this work until April 1861, when the Civil War began and she determined to serve the Federal troops.
After the Battle of Bull Run, Barton established an agency to obtain and distribute supplies to wounded soldiers. In July 1862, she obtained permission to travel behind the lines, eventually reaching some of the grimmest battlefields of the war and serving during the sieges of Petersburg and Richmond. Barton delivered aid to soldiers of both the North and South. In 1865, she conceived the project of locating missing soldiers and given a note of endorsement from President Lincoln. She set up the Bureau of Records in Washington and traced about 20,000 names. She also lectured on her experiences until her voice failed in 1868.
Barton settled in Danville, New York, where she was a semi-invalid for several years. In 1877, she wrote a founder of the International Red Cross, offering to lead an American branch of the organization. Thus, at 56, she began a new career. On May 21, 1881, Barton founded the American Red Cross as its president. A year later, her extraordinary efforts brought about the United States ratification of the Geneva Convention.
In 1883, Barton served as superintendent of the Women’s Reformatory Prison in Sherborn, Massachusetts, deviating from a career marked by single-minded commitment to her major cause.
As a Red Cross worker, she went to Michigan which had been ravaged by fires in 1882, and to Charleston, South Carolina which had suffered an earthquake. In 1884, she traveled the Ohio River, supplying flood victims. Five years later, she went to Johnstown, Pennsylvania to help it recover from a disastrous flood. In 1891, she traveled to Russia which was enduring famine, and five years later, to Turkey after the Armenian massacres. Barton was in her late 70’s when the Cuban insurrection required relief measures. She prepared to sail in aid of Cubans, but the Spanish-American War turned her ship into a welfare station for Americans as well. As late as 1900 she visited Galveston, Texas to supervise relief for victims of a tidal wave.
That same year, Congress reincorporated the Red Cross, demanding an accounting of funds. By 1904, public pressures and dissension within the Red Cross itself had become too much for her, and she resigned from the organization in June. A figure of international renown, she retired to Glen Echo, Maryland where she died in 1912.
Thank you doctor and nurse – COVID-19 pandemic