Scutari and Its Hospitals

Lord Sidney Godolphin Osborne

Jan 1855 · London : Dickinson

About this ebook

"The Hon. and Rev. Osborne, a personal friend of Sir Sydney Herbert, had come to Scutari as a volunteer chaplain. He had been cold-shouldered by authorities. Now he found himself assisting at operations. In this book he gives an account of scenes he experienced. In his opinion the hospitals would have collapsed if Miss Nightingale had not been present. The Crimean War was the first war reported to people in their daily newspapers. One result was that the war became a tourist attraction. Scores of civilian Englishmen went there and mingled with the troops to see the war for themselves. This was a new experience for those in authority in the Army. They had no rules for dealing with such people. This book and many others like it was the result. These civilian observers wrote up what they saw and gave public addresses about it, without censorship, sometimes causing great consternation among the politicos at home responsible for the war's blunders."--Elmer Belt Florence Nightingale collection (1958), p.17.

Ratings and reviews

This booklet was prepared as testimony by Sydney Godolphin Osborne on the condition of the army hospitals located at Scutari, Turkey during the Crimean War. Public outcry over the treatment, or lack of care, gave the Army a blackeye, and many commissions and other interested persons journeyed to the war theater to see conditions for themselves. Osborne gives a balanced account of hospitals and care of the patients; his charge is not against the medical corps, but the departments charged with maintaining sanitary conditions, medicine, and food respo0nsible for the conditions the hospitals operated under. I would recommend this book to persons interested in nineteenth century militiary medical practices.