|
|
Features Departments Information |
 Stanford T. Shulman, MD, Head, Division of Infectious Diseases, collects stamps with medical themes. As a regular Feature of The Child's Doctor, Dr. Shulman provides some of his favorite stamps and a brief commentary on them. |
Honoring Florence Nightingale and an STANFORD T. SHULMAN, MD aSpring 1997 THE STAMP COLUMN in this issue of The Child's Doctor is devoted to a superb organizer and medical administrator who became an almost legendary figure, one who more than any other is considered the founder of the modern nursing profession. Florence Nightingale was born in 1820 in Florence, Italy, where her wealthy British parents were living (hence her name). 
Ms. Nightingale devoted her early years to the study of health and reforms for the poor, over her parents' objections. She studied at a charitable institution, the institution for Deaconesses in Kaiserwerth, Germany, and apprenticed at the Maison de la Providence of the Sisters of Charity in Paris between 1850 and 1853. On returning to London, she was appointed Superintendent of an "Establishment for Gentlewomen during Illness." She soon had that hospital running in an orderly and efficient manner.  
When the Crimean War between England and Russia began in 1854, poorly equipped and poorly fed British soldiers suffered widespread infections, including cholera, and very high death rates among the wounded. The British War Secretary, Sidney Herbert, appointed Florence Nightingale to become Superintendent of female nursing in the Crimea. This was innovative since, at that time, female nurses had never served British forces. Arriving in Constantinople, Turkey, in November 1854, she took charge of the chaotic, filthy, rat-infected hospital at Scutari and introduced high standards of sanitation and cleanliness, nursing standards and food services. The results were spectacular, with at least a 50% drop in mortality, and she was soon given control over all the British military hospitals in the Crimea, not without objection from medical and surgical leadership.  
By the end of the war in 1856, Ms. Nightingale had become a national heroine in Britain. Subsequently, she founded a nurse's training school at St. Thomas's Hospital in London with publicly donated funds, changed nursing from a menial occupation to a trained profession, became a world authority on the scientific care of the ill, published a work (Notes on Nursing) that became the bible of the nursing profession, and devoted many years to improving the health conditions of both the British Army in India and the Indian people. She died at the age of 90 in 1910. Having refused burial in Westminster Abbey, Florence Nightingale was buried in East Wellow, Hampshire, with her parents.  
Ms. Nightingale has been honored on the stamps of 15 countries. Here we present stamps from Dominica, Belgium, British Virgin Islands, Republic of China, Hungary (Magyar) and Turkey. The large, light brown Jamaican stamp portrays Mary Seacole, a black Jamaican nurse, shown tending to a soldier at Scutari, where she worked briefly with Nightingale. Seacole also worked at the military hospital in Balaclava. 
In this season of the Bulls' annual playoff run to the NBA championship, we present a stamp from Zaire that honors the 1996 Atlanta Olympics by portraying our number 23 in his Bulls uniform. (However, Michael didn't participate in the 1996 Olympics!) |