In 1872, Joseph Lister was becoming frustrated as he worked as the Professor of Clinical Surgery in the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. This Christian had introduced antiseptics and hygiene in healthcare, and by now his methods were being introduced in many hospitals, saving the lives of countless people. However, right under his nose, he saw another kind of infection in the Royal Infirmary – that of the immorality and bad practice of the nurses. At his instigation, the hospital board appointed Deputy Surgeon General Charles Hamilton Fasson to liaise with Florence Nightingale, who had become famous during her nursing exploits among the wounded soldiers in the Crimean War, and who became known as the “Lady with the Lamp”.
This dedicated Christian lady became the pioneer of modern nursing, teaching her students to be professionals with Christian values at St Thomas’ Hospital in London. When Fasson contacted her about the possibility of sending “Nightingale Nurses” to improve the nursing standards at the Royal Infirmary, she wrote in 1872: “Edinburgh Royal Infirmary. We are going to undertake the nursing of this beastly “den of thieves”. (Nothing that I have ever known except the Vienna General Hospital approaches it in badness…).”Thus, a team of 17 Nightingale Nurses came up to Edinburgh, led by the English Quaker Christian, Elizabeth Barclay, to pioneer professional nursing in our capital, and set up the first Scottish school for training nurses. Although Barclay was the first Superintendent of the nurses, the stress of trying to deal with “the drinking, profligate (old) night nurses” and the uncooperative doctors, drove her nearly to a breakdown, and she resigned in the first year, in December 1873, leaving a vulnerable staff.
Florence Nightingale sent a powerful Christian rallying call to her team at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary on 6 December, 1873. “My dear friends, our good nurses…”, she wrote, “What is His will for us nurses? I will not tell you how He likes His wards kept, for that you know right well, as well as I do. Nos.1,2,3-20 medical wards, and Nos. 1,2,3-20 surgical wards, are His wards, are they not? And all those patients in them are His patients, and we are His, His nurses… In nursing, each of us may be about her “Father’s business”, each in her degree, as Christ was.”
Florence chose Angélique Pringle (1846-1920) to replace Elizabeth Barclay as the superintendent of the nurses. Angélique had trained under Florence Nightingale at St Thomas’ in London in 1868, and was soon noticed for her exceptional qualities, becoming her favourite “disciple”. The other nurses endearingly called Angélique “Pearl”, for she was a pearl of great price in nursing. This young woman of 27 took the bull by the horns and turned Edinburgh Royal Infirmary nursing into a professional arm of Scotland’s healthcare, for which it became famous worldwide. She was a Scottish woman from Hawick, with a strong Christian faith, which can be seen in the motivational letters between her and Florence, as she led the work in Edinburgh between 1873 and 1887.
After her ground-breaking work in Edinburgh, Angélique was promoted, as Florence’s protégée, to being the Superintendent of the Nightingale Training School for Nurses at St Thomas’ in London. However, she resigned under pressure in 1890, because she had converted to Roman Catholicism in an era that was still suspicious of this expression of church.
Her book, A Study of Nursing (1905), became an important influence in practical nursing, in which she also wrote that one of the important tasks of the nurse with dying patients is to “prepare them to enter the Dark Valley” and direct them to Christ, the light of the world. She also encouraged the nurses to attend regular prayer meetings at the hospital. A plaque has been dedicated to her inside the chapel at the Edinburgh Royal Infirmary.
“I was sick and you looked after me” (Matthew 25:36, NIV).
Image: Angélique Lucille Pringle, (1846-1920), Display No.26, from the Florence Nightingale Museum Collection