165: Nursing Through the Ages, Part 2 – Florence Nightingale and the War on Death

When war-torn wards near the Bosphorus Strait reeked of sewage and despair, Florence Nightingale arrived with 38 nurses, a ledger, and one stubborn oil-lamp. In today’s Hometown History, Shane Waters traces how Nightingale’s evidence-based reforms—and the parallel heroics of Jamaican-Scottish healer Mary Seacole—drove mortality at Scutari Barracks from 42 percent to just 2 percent, igniting the global movement for professional nursing. You’ll hear midnight whispers among wounded soldiers, discover the first infographic that rocked Britain’s Parliament, and learn how these breakthroughs shaped Indiana’s earliest nurse-training schools.

What You’ll Learn

• Why Nightingale’s coxcomb diagram changed military medicine forever
• The untold story of “Mother Seacole” and her British Hotel on the front lines
• How Victorian sanitation principles reached Wabash County Hospital in 1911
• The data-driven secret behind slashing infection rates—still used today

Love Local History?

1. Follow/Subscribe so part 3 lands automatically next week.
2. Rate & Review on Apple Podcasts
3. Join the Newsletter to stay up to date on episode releases and history stories itshometownhistory.com
4. Share the episode link with one friend who geeks out over medical history—word-of-mouth is our lifeblood!
5. Have a nursing hero in your hometown? Leave Shane a note: Shane@itshometownhistory.com

Every hometown has a story—sometimes it walks the night shift with a lamp.