Hello, my name is Paget Brewster.
And today we will be discussing Florence Nightingale,
the Mother of Modern Nursing.
Wha--that was perfect!
- Just rolled right off your tongue.
- Did it not?
- [mockingly] The mutter of mudern nursing.
- Did I say "The mutter of mudern nursing"?
- [very slurred] The mudder of muddern nurding.
- Hi, I'm Paget Brewster, and today,
we will be discussing Florence Nightingale,
The Mutter of Modern Nursing.
[both laugh]
Okay, our story begins in 1830s England,
which is the beginning of the Victorian Area.
- Oh. - "Era."
- I've been there.
- Shut it up now.
- [chuckles] - Okay.
So Florence Nightingale is the daughter
of a very wealthy affluent family
outside of London.
And Florence is doing what everyone her age is doing.
She's a teenager and her mother says,
Oh, this is so great.
You're just gonna study all this stuff.
And then you're gonna marry rich
'cause you're rich, and you're gonna have kids.
And Florence is like,
Ugh. I don't think I want that at all.
In fact, I like nursing.
I like fixing people and helping people.
And maybe I'm a [bleep] weirdo, I don't [bleep] know.
And she started thinking, Oh, my God.
Maybe God has chosen me for something greater
than just being a rich [bleep] lady.
So she tells her parents,
I don't want to run a house.
I just want to be a [bleep] nurse.
She wants to be a nurse, but nursing is not a profession.
And at the age of 24, she leaves the house
and starts interning at
the Harley Street hospital in London.
And in 1853, the War of Crimea breaks out.
So--
- Have you ever been in that river?
- Huh?
- "Cry me a" river? You never been there?
- Oh, [bleep] me. Oh, my God.
- [chuckles] - Oh, God.
Why do I want to kick you?
- I get that. - I like you.
Anyway.
In 1854, the Secretary of War,
Sidney Herbert writes a letter
to Florence Nightingale saying,
Florence, uh, you're a great nurse.
I've heard about your work
at the--at the something hospital
I already forgot the [bleep] name of.
- Is that Harley?
- Harley Street hospital. That's right.
I need you to go get a team of nurses together
and go and help out our military doctors.
So Florence was like, Yep, I'm [bleep] on board.
So Florence gathers together 38 nurses.
And they go to the Scutari Barracks Hospital
in Constantinople,
which is a piece of shit.
It was rats and lice.
It's not even a hospital; it's a barracks.
So they show up, and the male doctors,
they flip the [bleep] out.
They're like, [Bleep] these broads.
We don't need any chicks here.
God damn it. This sucks.
- Would you like me to help you?
- Yes, please, Derek.
You broke it! [laughs]
That's pretty manly. [laughs]
[shimmering tone]
Thank you. Gi--
Don't you--
Give me my [bleep] booze, bitch!
All right, you're [bleep] in for it now.
So the doctor's pissed off, and Florence is like,
Yeah-yeah-yeah-yeah, I get that.
It's never happened before in history,
but I'm here now, my ladies are here now.
Florence and her nurses are
shocked at the conditions,
but they believe in Florence, and they're like,
All right.
We're gonna do whatever she says.
Let's go. Let's clean this up.
Two days later, thousands of soldiers injured
from the Battle of Inkerman
are brought into the barracks hospital.
This was 3,000 soldiers
laying on straw pallets.
They are covered in their own excrement.
They are bleeding.
So the doctors are like,
Oh, shit. [Bleep] it, we need your help.
She ends up being known as the lady with the lamp,
because it was this British woman
there in Crimea,
holding a lamp and visiting soldiers.
But one night,
while she was changing the dressing
of a man who had had an arm amputation,
an army doctor walked in.
And the man was naked. - But why?
- Because they had no resources.
And the doctor said to Florence,
The [bleep] are you doing? His dick is out.
And Florence was like,
[Bleep] you. His [bleep] arm's infected.
- Holding for plane. [distant plane drones]
- Oh, my God, we're holding for a plane.
Don't kick me. - I have a twitch.
- I am not a fan of this. I thought you were a gentleman.
- Florence Nightingale. I thought you liked--
- Oh, I'm a fan of Florence Nightingale, not you.
You ready? - [chuckles]
- Shut up!
I'm gonna kick you in the nuts!
Bring your nuts closer
so I can kick the-- 'cause I'm tired.
- [soft laugh]
- So all of these soldiers are amazed
this lady with a lamp was protecting them.
And the soldiers were saying to each other,
This is the only person that's cared about us.
And Florence and her nurses have done
everything they can do.
Unfortunately, in the four months
that they are first there, 4,777 soldiers die.
And Florence says, I'm so [bleep] angry.
I'm so angry we lost so many men.
And I need to find out why we failed.
So the Crimean War ends in 1856.
And Florence gets back to England.
And she is awarded
a $250,000 war fund dispensation gift
from Queen Victoria.
But Queen Victoria says,
What happened in Crimea?
And Florence says, I don't [bleep] know.
It was bad.
And I think I noticed a trend.
And I'm gonna have to [bleep] think about this.
She is also really sick.
She has the Crimean flu.
I mean, bad, coughing, sputum.
- What's sputum?
- Sputum's an old term for mucus.
- Too much informashe. - "Informashe"?
- [chuckles]
- I will not accept that from you.
- Crimea river.
- Shut up. [Bleep] you. I'm drunk.
So...
Florence goes back to England
and just goes to her bed.
She's so ill
that she stays in bed for 11 years.
- What? - And it--yes.
In those 11 years,
she starts studying
all of her notes from Constantinople.
And she's like, I know something was wrong here.
And she's building graphs.
And she starts seeing a pattern.
And she's like, I think I figured out what happened.
The men at the Scutari Hospital
were ten times more likely to die
from an infectious disease than from a war wound.
That's why we failed. It was hygiene.
And she was like,
Cleanliness is next to godliness.
So she presents all of this analytical data
to Queen Victoria.
And in 1859, she wrote a book
called "Notes on Nursing."
Years go by,
and Florence uses the money that Queen Victoria gave her
to found the Nightingale School of Nursing,
which is the first nursing school
in the history of ever?
Nursing didn't exist until Florence Nightingale.
Also, when Florence Nightingale is 87 years old,
she received the Order of Merit
from Queen Victoria,
who still is kicking, and is like,
This [bleep] Florence is great!
She fixed a bunch of shit.
I like her moxie.
This was the first time a woman was ever awarded
the Order of Merit.
And that's a big [bleep] deal.
[burps] - Are you okay?
- Yeah, I burped. - I know.
That looked aggressive.
- It was not an aggressive burp.
- I mean, aggressive as in, like,
I wanna make sure you're not gonna throw up.
Okay? - You know I--I'm a lady.
- Oh. Curtsy.
- [British accent] C--curtsy.
Okay, you ready?
So Florence Nightingale was responsible
for pioneering an industry
and giving women a job and a purpose
that they weren't allowed at that time.
So what she did was really extraordinary.
And it's amazing.
159 years later,
her book is still used in hospitals today.
My math is not good.
It might be 170-something.
- Remember, it's 2019.
- Okay, I don't like math.
I want you to do it.
Not because you're a man. Well, kind of.
- Uh....
[patriotic music]