The death rate of the English and French soldiers was so fearful,
and the neglect and condition of the wounded men so appalling in
the Crimean war (1854), that the entire English nation was aroused.
It was a woman, Florence Nightingale, who was sent out by the nation
and given full authority to act in the emergency upon which hung
the fate of the armies.

Not only did this noble woman, with her band of thirty-seven
nurses, bring healing instead of death in those army hospitals,
but she instituted reform in sanitation which was adopted by
hospitals throughout the world.

To her also humanity owes the inestimable boon of the trained
nurse of education, refinement and ability. Before Florence
Nightingale gave herself and initiated the movement for the
training of young women of standing as nurses, such work had been
left to the rough, uncouth, and often low-lived men and women, of
whom the unspeakable Sairey Gamp, immortalized by Charles Dickens,
is a fitting type.

As the Christian church was the first to give healing to the
needy, so it has carried this ministry wherever in the world its
banners have been set up.

Throughout this land, from Alaska to the Gulf, may be found
hospitals established by the Christian church--the greater number
the product of Home Missions.

The Home Mission nurse, or deaconess-nurse, is an important factor