Pictures of Nursing - NLM Exhibition Program

Florence Nightingale Letters

During the Crimean War the United Kingdom fought alongside the Ottoman Empire against Russia, in areas of Eastern Europe and Western Asia. Sidney Herbert, British Minister at War, asked Florence Nightingale to oversee a team of nurses in the military hospitals of the Turkish region. Nightingale traveled with 38 women to Scutari, outside Istanbul, to take over the management of the barrack hospital there. Four letters from Nightingale’s wartime correspondence are in the National Library of Medicine collection. View her handwritten letters and read about how she responded to inquiries by soldiers’ families and others.

• 
  1. Excerpt of a letter [1855]

• 
  2. Letter to Mrs. Batch dated October 25, 1855

  View her hand-written letters and read about how she responded to inquiries by soldiers’ families and others..

• 
  3. Letter dated January 18, 1856

  View her hand-written letters and read about how she responded to inquiries by soldiers’ families and others.

• 
  4. Letter to Miss Tebbutt dated April 25, 1856

  View her hand-written letters and read about how she responded to inquiries by soldiers’ families and others.

VIEW LETTERS:   1   |   2    |   3    |   4

Nightingale, Florence. Florence Nightingale Letters Collection: 1845-1878. Located in Modern Manuscripts Collection, History of Medicine Division, National Library of Medicine, Bethesda, MD; MS C 545