Florence Nightingale

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Queen Victoria sent for her to visit her at Balmoral, and presented her with a valuable jewel; a ruby-red enamel cross on a white field, encircled by a black band with the words, "Blessed are the merciful." The letters V. R., surmounted by a crown in diamonds, are impressed upon the centre of the cross. Green enamel branches of palm, tipped with gold, form the framework of the shield, while around their stems is a riband of the blue enamel with the single word "Crimea." On the top are three brilliant stars of diamonds. On the back is an inscription written by the Queen. The Sultan sent her a magnificent bracelet, and the government, $250,000, to found the school for nurses at St. Thomas' Hospital.

Since the war, Miss Nightingale has never been in strong health, but she has written several valuable books. Her Hospital Notes, published in 1859, have furnished plans for scores of new hospitals. Her Notes on Nursing, published in 1860, of which over one hundred thousand have been sold, deserve to be in every home. She is the most earnest advocate of sunlight and fresh air.

She says: "An extraordinary fallacy is the dread of night air. What air can we breathe at night but night air? The choice is between pure night air from without, and foul night air from within. Most people prefer the latter,--an unaccountable choice. What will they say if it be proved true that fully one-half of all the disease we suffer from, is occasioned by people sleeping with their windows shut? An open window most nights of the year can never hurt any one. In great cities night air is often the best and purest to be had in the twenty-four hours.

"The five essentials, for healthy houses," she says, are "pure air, pure water, efficient drainage, cleanliness, and light.... I have known whole houses and hospitals smell of the sink. I have met just as strong a stream of sewer air coming up the back staircase of a grand London house, from the sink, as I have ever met at Scutari; and I have seen the rooms in that house all ventilated by the open doors, and the passages all unventilated by the close windows, in order that as much of the sewer air as possible might be conducted into and retained in the bed-rooms. It is wonderful!"

Miss Nightingale has much humor, and she shows it in her writings. She is opposed to dark houses; says they promote scrofula; to old papered walls, and to carpets full of dust. An uninhabited room becomes full of foul air soon, and needs to have the windows opened often. She would keep sick people, or well, forever in the sunlight if possible, for sunlight is the greatest possible purifier of the atmosphere. "In the unsunned sides of narrow streets, there is degeneracy and weakliness of the human race,--mind and body equally degenerating." Of the ruin wrought by bad air, she says: "Oh, the crowded national school, where so many children's epidemics have their origin, what a tale its air-test would tell! We should have parents saying, and saying rightly, 'I will not send my child to that school; the air-test stands at "horrid."' And the dormitories of our great boarding-schools! Scarlet fever would be no more ascribed to contagion, but to its right cause, the air-test standing at 'Foul.' We should hear no longer of 'Mysterious Dispensations' and of 'Plague and Pestilence' being in 'God's hands,' when, so far as we know, He has put them into our own." She urges much rubbing of the body, washing with warm water and soap. "The only way I know to remove dust, is to wipe everything with a damp cloth.... If you must have a carpet, the only safety is to take it up two or three times a year, instead of once.... The best wall now extant is oil paint."